
pyrigktN^ 



COP«?IGHT DEPOSfT 



THE OXFOED BOOK OF 
AMEEICAN ESSAYS 



CHOSEN BY 

BRANDER MATTHEWS 

Professor in Columbia University 
Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters 



NEW YORK 
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

AMERICAN BRANCH: 35 West 32nd Street 

LONDON, TORONTO, MELBOURNE, AND BOMBAY 
HUMPHREY MILFORD 

1914 

ALL BIGHTS BESEEVED 



?6 ^^ 



n 



i 



Copyright, 1914 

Oxford University Press 

american branch 



DEC 18(914 



CI.A391014 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction v 

The Ephemera: An Emblem of Human Life . . i 

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1.790). 
The Whistle 4 

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). 
Dialogue Between Franklin and the Gout . . 7 

Benjamin Franklin (1706- 1790). 
Consolation for the Old Bachelor . . . -15 

Francis Hopkinson (1737-1791). 
John Bull 21 

Washington Irving (1783-1859). 
The Mutability of Literature 34 

Washington Irving (1783- 1859). 
Kean's Acting . . . . . . . . . 47 ^/ 

Richard Henry Dana (1787- 1 879). 
Gifts . .62 

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803- 1882). 
Uses of Great Men . • ^7 

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803- 1882). 
Buds and Bird- Voices .88 

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864). 
The Philosophy of Composition 99 

Edgar Allan Poe (1809- 1849). 
Bread and the Newspaper 114 

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894). 
Walking 128 

Henry David Thoreau (i 817- 1862). 
On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners . . 166 

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891). 
Preface to " Leaves of Grass " 194 

Walt Whitman (18 19- 1892), 
iii 



iv Contents 

PAGE 

Americanism in Literature 213 

Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911). 
Thackeray in America 229 

George William Curtis (1824-1892). 
Our March to Washington 241 

Theodore Winthrop (1828-1861). 
Calvin (A Study of Character) ..... 268 

Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900). 
Five American Contributions to Civilization . 280 

Charles William Eliot (1834- ) 
I Talk of Dreams . 308 

William Dean Ho wells (1837- ). 
An Idyl of the Honey-Bee 331 

John Burroughs (1837- ). 
Cut-off Copples's . . . 351 

Clarence King (1842-1901). 
The Theatre Francais 368 

Henry James (1843- ). 
Theocritus on Cape Cod 394 

Hamilton Wright Mabie (1846- ). 
Colonialism in the United States .... 410 

Henry Cabot Lodge (1850- ). 
New York After Paris 440 

William Crary Brownell (1851- ). 
The Tyranny of Things ...... 467 

Edward Sandford Martin (1856- ). 
Free Trade vs. Protection in Literature . . . 475 

Samuel McChord Crothers (1857- ). 
Dante and the Bowery 480 

Theodore Roosevelt (1858- ). 
The Revolt of the Unfit 489 

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862- ). 
On Translating the Odes of Horace .... 497 

William Peterfield Trent (1862- ). 



INTRODUCTION 

The customary antithesis between *' American " litera- 
ture and " English " literature is unfortunate and mislead- 
ing in that it seems to exclude American authors from the 
noble roll of those who have contributed to the literature 
of our mother-tongue. Of course, when we consider it 
carefully we cannot fail to see that the literature of a lan- 
guage is one and indivisible and that the nativity or the 
domicile of those who make it matters nothing. Just as 
Alexandrian literature is Greek, so American literature is 
English; and as Theocritus demands inclusion in any ac- 
count of Greek literature, so Thoreau cannot be omitted 
from any history of English literature as a whole. The 
works of Anthony Hamilton and Rousseau, Mme. de Stael 
and M. Maeterlinck are not more indisputably a part of 
the literature of -the French language than the works of 
Franklin and Emerson, of Hawthorne and Poe are part of 
the literature of the English language. Theocritus may 
never have set foot on the soil of Greece, and Thoreau 
never adventured himself on the Atlantic to visit the island- 
home of his ancestors ; yet the former expressed himself in 
Greek and the latter in English, — and how can either be 
neglected in any comprehensive survey of the literature of 
his own tongue? 

None the less is it undeniable that there is in Franklin 
and Emerson, in Walt Whitman and Mark Twain, what- 
ever their mastery of the idiom they inherited in common 
with Steele and Carlyle, with Browning and Lamb, an 
indefinable and intangible flavor which distinguishes the 



vi Introduction 

first group from the second. The men who have set down 
the feeHngs and the thoughts, the words and the deeds of 
the inhabitants of the United States have not quite the 
same outlook on hfe that we find in the men who have 
made a similar record in the British Isles. The social 
atmosphere is not the same on the opposite shores of the 
Western ocean; and the social organization is different in 
many particulars. For all that American literature is, — in 
the apt phrase of Mr. Howells, — " a condition of English 
literature," nevertheless it is also distinctively American. 
American writers are as loyal to the finer traditions of 
English literature as British writers are ; they take an equal 
pride that they are also heirs of Chaucer and Dryden and 
subjects of King Shakspere; yet they cannot help hav- 
ing the note of their own nationality. 

Green, when he came to the Fourth of July, 1776, de- 
clared that thereafter the history of the English-speaking 
people flowed in two currents; and it is equally obvious 
that the stream of English literature has now two channels. 
The younger and the smaller is American — and what can 
we call the older and the ampler except British ? A century 
ago there were published collections entitled the British 
Poets, the British Novelists, and the British Essayists; and 
the adjective was probably then chosen to indicate that 
these gatherings included the work of Scotch and Irish 
writers. Whatever the reason, the choice was happy; and 
the same adjective would serve to indicate now that the 
selections excluded the work of American writers. The 
British branch of English literature is the richer and 
the more various; yet the American branch has its own 
richness and its own variety, even if these qualities have 
revealed themselves only in the past hundred years. 

It may be noted also that although American literature 
has not been adorned by so great a galaxy of brilliant names 



Introduction ' vii 

as illumined British literature in the nineteenth century, it 
has had the good fortune to possess more authors of cos- 
mopolitan fame than can be found in the German literature 
of the past hundred years, in the Italian, or in the Spanish. 
A forgotten American essayist once asserted that '' foreign 
nations are a contemporaneous posterity," and even if this 
smart saying is not to be taken too literally, it has its 
significance. There is therefore food for thought in the 
fact that at least half a dozen, not to say half a score, of 
American authors have v^^on wide popularity outside the 
limits of their own language, — a statement which could not 
be made of as many German or Italian or Spanish authors 
of the nineteenth century. From the death of Goethe to 
the arrival of the playwrights of the present generation, 
perhaps Heine is the sole German writer either of prose or 
of verse who has established his reputation broadly among 
the readers of other tongues than his own. And not more 
than one or two Spanish or Italian authors have been re- 
ceived even by their fellow Latins, as warmly as the French 
and the Germans have welcomed Cooper and Poe, Emerson 
and Mark Twain. 

It is to present typical and characteristic examples of 
the American contribution to English literature in the 
essay-form that this volume has been prepared. Perhaps 
the term " essay-form " is not happily chosen since the 
charm of the essay lies in the fact that it is not formal, 
that it may be whimsical in its point of departure, and 
capricious in its ramblings after it has got itself under 
way. Even the Essay is itself a chameleon, changing 
color while we study it. There is little in common between 
Locke's austere Essay on the Human Understanding 
and Lamb's fantastic and frolicsome essay on Roast 
Pig. He would be bold indeed who should take compass 
and chain to measure off the precise territory of the Essay 



viii ' Introduction 

and to mark with scientific exactness the boundaries which 
separate it from the Address on the one side and from the 
Letter on the other. 

*' Some (there are) that turn over all books and are 
equally searching in all papers," said Ben Jonson ; " that 
write out of what they presently find or meet, without 
choice. . . . Such are all the Essayists, ever their mas- 
ter Montaigne." Bacon and Emerson followed in the 
footsteps of Montaigne, and present us with the results of 
their browsings among books and of their own dispersed 
meditations. In their hands the essay lacks cohesion and 
unity; it is essentially discursive. Montaigne never stuck 
to his text, when he had one; and the paragraphs of any 
of Emerson's essays might be shuffled without increasing 
their fortuitous discontinuity. 

After Montaigne and Bacon came Steele and Addison, in 
whose hands the essay broadened its scope and took on 
a new aspect. The eighteenth century essay is so various 
that it may be accepted as* the forerunner of the nineteenth 
century magazine, with its character-sketches and its brief 
tales, its literary and dramatic criticism, its obituary com- 
memorations and its serial stories — for what but a serial 
story is the succession of papers devoted to the sayings 
and doings of Sir Roger ? It was a new departure, although 
the writers of the Tatler and of the Spectator had profited 
by the Conversations of Walton and by the Charac- 
ters of La Bruyere, by the epistles of Llorace and by the 
comedies of Moliere. (Has it ever been pointed out that 
the method of Steele and Addison in depicting Sir Roger is 
curiously akin to the method of Moliere in presenting M. 
Jourdain?) 

The delightful form of poetry which we call by a French 
name, vers de societe, (although it has flourished more abun- 
dantly in English Hterature than in French) and which 



Introduction ix 

Mr. Austin Dobson, one of its supreme masters, prefers to 
call by Cowper's term, " familiar verse," may be ac- 
cepted as the metrical equivalent of the prose essay as this 
was developed and expanded by the English writers of the 
eighteenth century. And as the familiar verse of our 
language is ampler and richer than that of any other tongue, 
so also is the familiar essay. Indeed, the essay is one of 
the most characteristic expressions of the quality of our 
race. In its ease and its lightness and its variety, it is 
almost unthinkable in German; and even in French it is 
far less frequent than in English and far less assiduously 
cultivated. 

As Emerson trod in the footsteps of Bacon so Washing- 
ton Irving walked in the trail blazed by Steele and Addison 
and Goldsmith ; and Franklin earlier, although his essays are 
in fact only letters, had revealed his possession of the 
special quality the essay demands, — the playful wisdom of 
a man of the world who is also a man of letters. Indeed, 
Dr. Franklin was far better fitted to shine as an essayist 
than his more ponderous contemporary, Dr. Johnson ; cer- 
tainly Franklin would never have '' made little fishes talk 
like whales." And in the nineteenth century the American 
branch of English literature has had a group of essayists 
less numerous than that which adorned the British branch, 
but not less interesting or less important to their own 
people. 

Among these American essayists we may find all sorts 
and conditions of writers, — poets adventuring themselves 
in prose, novelists eschewing story-telling, statesmen turn- 
ing for a moment to matters of less weight, men of science 
and men of affairs chatting about themselves and airing 
their opinions at large. In their hands, as in the hands 
of their British contemporaries, the essay remains infinitely 
various, refusing to conform to any single type, and insist- 



X Introduction 

ing on being itself and on expressing its author. We find 
in the best of these American essayists the famihar style 
and the everyday vocabulary, the apparent simplicity and 
the seeming absence of effort, the horror of pedantry and 
the scorn of affectation, v^^hich are the abiding characteris- 
tics of the true essay. We find also the flavor of good talk, 
of the sprightly conversation that may sparkle in front of a 
wood fire and that often vanishes with the curling blue 
smoke. 

It is the bounden duty of every maker of an anthology to 
set forth the principles that have guided him in the choice 
of the examples he is proffering to the public. The present 
editor has excluded purely literary criticism, as not quite 
falling within the boundaries of the essay, properly so- 
called. Then he has avoided all set orations, although he 
has not hesitated to include more than one paper originally 
prepared to be read aloud by its writer, because these ex- 
amples seemed to him to fall within the boundaries of the 
essay. (Nearly all of Emerson's essays, it may be noted, 
had been lectures in an early stage of their existence.) 
Furthermore he has omitted all fiction, strictly to be so 
termed, although he would gladly have welcomed an apo- 
logue like Mark Twain's '' Traveling with a Reformer,'* 
which is essentially an essay despite its use of dialogue. He 
has included also Franklin's " Dialogue with the Gout," 
which is instinct with the true spirit of the essay ; and he has 
accepted as essays Franklin's *' Ephemera " and " The 
Whistle," although they were both of them letters to the 
same lady. As the essay flowers out of leisure and out of 
culture, and as there has been in the United States no long 
background of easy tranquillity, there is in the American 
branch of English literature a relative deficiency in certain 
of the lighter forms of the essay more abundantly repre- 
sented in the British branch: and therefore the less fre- 



i 



Introduction xi 

quent examples of these lighter forms have here been com- 
panioned by graver discussions, never grave enough, how- 
ever, to be described as disquisitions. Finally, every se- 
lection is presented entire, except that Dana's paper on 
Kean's acting has been shorn of a needless preparatory 
note. 

Brander Matthev^s. 



[The essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry D. Thoreau, Thomas Wentworth 
Higginson, Charles Dudley Warner, and John Burroughs, are used 
by permission of, and by arrangement with, The Houghton Mifflin 
Company, the authorized publishers of their works. The essays by 
George William Curtis and by William Dean Howells are used by 
permission of Harper and Brothers. The essays by William Crary 
Brownell, Edward Sanford Martin, Nicholas Murray Butler, and 
Theodore Roosevelt are printed by permission of Charles Scrib- 
ner's Sons, the essay by Charles William Eliot by permission of 
The Century Company, and that by Henry James by permission of 
The Macmillan Company.] 



THE EPHEMERA: AN EMBLEM OF HUMAN 

LIFE 

TO MADAME BRILLON, OF PASSY 
Benjamin Franklin 

You may remember, my dear friend, that when we lately 
spent that happy day in the delightful garden and sweet 
society of the Moulin Joly, I stopped a little in one of our 
walks, and stayed some time behind the company. We 
had been shown numberless skeletons of a kind of little 
fly, called an ephemera, whose successive generations, we 
were told, were bred and expired within the day. I hap- 
pened to see a living company of them on a leaf, who ap- 
peared to be engaged in conversation. You know I 
understand all the inferior animal tongues. My too great 
application to the study of them is the best excuse I can 
give for the little progress I have made in your charming 
language. I listened through curiosity to the discourse of 
these little creatures ; but as they, in their national vivacity, 
spoke three or four together, I could make but little of 
their conversation. I found, however, by some broken 
expressions that I heard now and then, they were disputing 
warmly on the merit of two foreign musicians, one a cousin, 
the other a moscheto; in which dispute they spent their 
time, seemingly as regardless of the shortness of life as if 
they had been sure of living a month. Happy people! 
thought I ; you are certainly under a wise, just, and mild 
government, since you have no public grievances to com- 



2 American Essays 

plain of, nor any subject of contention but the perfections 
and imperfections of foreign music. I turned my head 
from them to an old gray-headed one, who was single on 
another leaf, and talking to himself. Being amused with 
his soliloquy, I put it down in writing, in hopes it will 
likewise amuse her to whom I am so much indebted for the 
most pleasing of all amusements, her delicious company 
and heavenly harmony. 

'' It was," said he, " the opinion of learned philosophers 
of our race, who lived and flourished long before my time, 
that this vast world, the Moulin Joly, could not itself sub- 
sist more than eighteen hours ; and I think there was some 
foundation for that opinion, since, by the apparent motion 
of the great luminary that gives life to all nature, and 
which in my time has evidently declined considerably 
towards the ocean at the end of our earth, it must then 
finish its course, be extinguished in the waters that sur- 
round us, and leave the world in cold and darkness, neces- 
sarily producing universal death and destruction. I have 
lived seven of those hours, a great age, being no less than 
four hundred and twenty minutes of time. How very few 
of us continue so long! I have seen generations born, 
flourish, and expire. My present friends are the children 
and grandchildren of the friends of my youth, who are 
now, alas, no more ! And I must soon follow them ; for, 
by the course of nature, though still in health, I cannot 
expect to live above seven or eight minutes longer. What 
now avails all my toil and labor in amassing honey-dew 
on this leaf, which I cannot live to enjoy! What the 
political struggles I have been engaged in for the good of 
my compatriot inhabitants of this bush, or my philosophical 
studies for the benefit of our race in general ! for in politics 
what can laws do without morals? Our present race of 
ephemerae will in a course of minutes become corrupt, 



The Ephemera : An Emblem of Human Life 3 

like those of other and older bushes, and consequently as 
wretched. And in philosophy how small our progress! 
Alas! art is long, and Hfe is short! My friends would 
comfort me with the idea of a name they say I shall 
leave behind me ; and they tell me I have lived long enough 
to nature and to glory. But what will fame be to an 
ephemera who no longer exists? And what will become 
of all history in the eighteenth hour, when the world itself, 
even the whole Moulin Joly, shall come to its end and be 
buried in universal ruin ? " 

To me, after all my eager pursuits, no solid pleasures 
now remain, but the reflection of a long life spent in 
meaning well, the sensible conversation of a few good 
lady ephemerae, and now and then a kind smile and a 
tune from the ever amiable Brillante. 



THE WHISTLE 

TO MADAME BRILLON 

Benjamin Franklin 

I RECEIVED my dear friend's two letters, one for Wednes- 
day and one for Saturday. This is again Wednesday. I 
do not deserve one for to-day, because I have not answered 
the former. But, indolent as I am, and averse to writing, 
the fear of having no more of your pleasing epistles, if I do 
not contribute to the correspondence, obliges me to take 
up my pen; and as Mr. B. has kindly sent me word that 
he sets out to-morrow to see you, instead of spending this 
Wednesday evening, as I have done its namesakes, in 
your delightful company, I sit down to spend it in thinking 
of you, in writing to you, and in reading over and over 
again your letters. 

I am charmed with your description of Paradise, and 
with your plan of living there; and I approve much of 
your conclusion, that, in the meantime, we should draw 
all the good we can from this world. In my opinion we 
might all draw more good from it than we do, and suffer 
less evil, if we would take care not to give too much for 
whistles. For to me it seems that most of the unhappy peo- 
ple we meet with are become so by neglect of that caution. 

You ask what I mean? You love stories, and will ex- 
cuse my telling one of myself. 

When I was a child of seven years old, my friends, on 
a holiday, filled my pocket with coppers. I went directly 
to a shop where they sold toys for children; and being 

4 



The Whistle 5 

charmed with the sound of a whistle, that I met by the way 
in the hands of another boy, I voluntarily offered and 
gave all my money for one. I then came home, and went 
whistling all over the house, much pleased with my whistle, 
but disturbing all the family. My brothers, and sisters, 
and cousins, understanding the bargain I had made, told 
me I had given four times as much for it as it was worth; 
put me in mind what good things I might have bought 
with the rest of the money; and laughed at me so much 
for my folly, that I cried with vexation; and the reflection 
gave me more chagrin than the whistle gave me pleasure. 

This, however, was afterwards of use to me, the im- 
pression continuing on my mind; so that often, when I 
was tempted to buy some unnecessary thing, I said to 
myself, Dont give too much for the zvhistle; and I saved 
my money. 

As I grew up, came into the world, and observed the 
actions of men, I thought I met with many, very many, 
who gave too much for the whistle. 

When I saw one too ambitious of court favor, sacrificing 
his time in attendance on levees, his repose, his liberty, his 
virtue, and perhaps his friends, to attain it, I have said to 
myself. This man gives too much for his whistle. 

When I saw another fond of popularity, constantly em- 
ploying himself in political bustles, neglecting his own af- 
fairs, and ruining them by that neglect, He pays, indeed, 
said I, too much for his whistle. 

If I knew a miser, who gave up every kind of comfort- 
able living, all the pleasure of doing good to others, all 
the esteem of his fellow-citizens, and the joys of benevo- 
lent friendship, for the sake of accumulating wealth, Poor 
man, said I, you pay too much for your whistle. 

When I met with a man of pleasure, sacrificing every 
laudable improvement of the mind, or of his fortune, to 



6 American Essays 

mere corporeal sensations, and ruining his health in their 
pursuit, Mistaken man, said I, you are providing pain for 
yourself, instead of pleasure ; you give too much for your 
whistle. 

If I see one fond of appearance, or fine clothes, fine 
houses, fine furniture, fine equipages, all above his fortune, 
for which he contracts debts, and ends his career in a 
prison, Alas! say I, he has paid dear, very dear, for his 
whistle. 

When I see a beautiful sweet-tempered girl married to 
an ill-natured brute of a husband, What a pity, say I, that 
she should pay so much for a whistle! 

In short, I conceive that great part of the miseries of 
mankind are brought upon them by the false estimates they 
have made of the value of things, and by their giving too 
much for their whistles. 

Yet I ought to have charity for these unhappy people, 
when I consider that, with all this wisdom of which I 
am boasting, there are certain things in the world so tempt- 
ing, for example, the apples of King John, which happily 
are not to be bought ; for if they were put to sale by auction, 
I might very easily be led to ruin myself in the purchase, and 
find that I had once more given too much for the whistle. 

Adieu, my dear friend, and believe me ever yours very 
sincerely and with unalterable affection. 



DIALOGUE BETWEEN FRANKLIN AND THE 
GOUT 

Midnight, 22 October, 1780. 

Franklin. Eh! Oh! eh! What have I done to 
merit these cruel sufferings? 

Gout. Many things ; you have ate and drank too freely, 
and too much indulged those legs of yours in their in- 
dolence. 

Franklin. Who is it that accuses me? 

Gout. It is I, even I, the Gout. 

Franklin. What! my enemy in person? 

Gout. No, not your enemy. 

Franklin. I repeat it, my enemy; for you would not 
only torment my body to death, but ruin my good name; 
you reproach me as a glutton and a tippler; now all the 
world, that knows me, will allow that I am neither the 
one nor the other. 

Gout. The world may think as it pleases; it is always 
very complaisant to itself, and sometimes to its friends; 
but I very well know that the quantity of meat and drink 
proper for a man, who takes a reasonable degree of exercise, 
would be too much for another, who never takes any. 

Franklin. I take — eh ! oh ! — as much exercise — eh ! — 
as I can, Madam Gout. You know my sedentary state, 
and on that account, it would seem. Madam Gout, as if you 
might spare me a little, seeing it is not altogether my own 
fault. 

Gout. Not a jot; your rhetoric and your politeness are 
thrown away; your apology avails nothing. If your situa- 

7 



8 American Essays 

tion in life is a sedentary one, your amusements, your 
recreation, at least, should be active. You ought to walk 
or ride; or, if the weather prevents that, play at biUiards. 
But let us examine your course of life. While the morn- 
ings are long, and you have leisure to go abroad, what do 
you do? Why, instead of gaining an appetite for break- 
fast, by salutary exercise, you amuse yourself with books, 
pamphlets, or newspapers, which commonly are not worth 
the reading. Yet you eat an inordinate breakfast, four 
dishes of tea, with cream, and one or two buttered toasts, 
with slices of hung beef, which I fancy are not things the 
most easily digested. Immediately afterwards you sit down 
to write at your desk, or converse with persons who apply 
to you on business. Thus the time passes till one, without 
any kind of bodily exercise. But all this I could pardon, in 
regard, as you say, to your sedentary condition. But what 
is your practice after dinner? Walking in the beautiful 
gardens of those friends with whom you have dined would 
be the choice of men of sense ; yours is to be fixed down 
to chess, where you are found engaged for two or three 
hours! This is your perpetual recreation, which is the 
least eligible of any for a^ sedentary man, because, instead 
of accelerating the motion of the fluids, the rigid attention 
it requires helps to retard the circulation and obstruct 
internal secretions. Wrapt in the speculations of this 
wretched game, you destroy your constitution. What can 
be expected from such a course of living, but a body re- 
plete with stagnant humors, ready to fall prey to all kinds 
of dangerous maladies, if I, the Gout, did not occasionally 
bring you relief by agitating those humors, and so purify- 
ing or dissipating them? If it was in some nook or alley 
in Paris, deprived of walks, that you played awhile at 
chess after dinner, this might be excusable; but the same 
taste prevails with you in Passy, Auteuil, Montmartre, or 



Dialogue Between Franklin and the Gout 9 

Sanoy, places where there are the finest gardens and walks, 
a pure air, beautiful women, and most agreeable and in- 
structive conversation; all which you might enjoy by fre- 
quenting the walks. But these are rejected for this 
abominable game of chess. Fie, then, Mr. Franklin! But 
amidst my instructions, I had almost forgot to administer 
my wholesome corrections ; so take that twinge, — and that. 

Franklin. Oh ! eh ! oh ! Ohhh ! As much instruction as 
you please, Madam Gout, and as many reproaches; but 
pray, Madam, a truce with your corrections ! 

Gout. No, Sir, no, — I will not abate a particle of what 
is so much for your good, — therefore 

Franklin. Oh ! ehhh ! — It is not fair to say I take no 
exercise, when I do very often, going out to dine and re- 
turning in my carriage. 

Gout. That, of all imaginable exercises, is the most 
slight and insignificant, if you allude to the motion of a 
carriage suspended on springs. By observing the degree 
of heat obtained by different kinds of motion, we may 
form an estimate of the quantity of exercise given by each. 
Thus, for example, if you turn out to walk in winter with 
cold feet, in an hour's time you will be in a glow all over; 
ride on horseback, the same effect will scarcely be per- 
ceived by four hours' round trotting; but if you loll in a 
carriage, such as you have mentioned, you may travel all 
day and gladly enter the last inn to warm your feet by a 
fire. Flatter yourself then no longer, that half an hour's 
airing in your carriage deserves the name of exercise. 
Providence has appointed few to roll in carriages, while he 
has given to all a pair of legs, which are machines infinitely 
more commodious and serviceable. Be grateful, then, and 
make a proper use of yours. Would you know how they 
forward the circulation of your fluids, in the very action 
of transporting you from place to place; observe when you 



10 American Essays 

walk, that all your weight is alternately thrown from one 
leg to the other; this occasions a great pressure on the 
vessels of the foot, and repels their contents; when re- 
lieved, by the weight being thrown on the other foot, the 
vessels of the first are allowed to replenish, and, by a 
return of this weight, this repulsion again succeeds; thus 
accelerating the circulation of the blood. The heat pro- 
duced in any given time depends on the degree of this 
acceleration; the fluids are shaken, the humors attenuated, 
the secretions facilitated, and all goes well; the cheeks are 
ruddy, and health is established. Behold your fair friend 
at Auteuil ; a lady who received from bounteous nature 
more really useful science than half a dozen such pre- 
tenders to philosophy as you have been able to extract from 
all your books. When she honors you with a visit, it is 
on foot. She walks all hours of the day, and leaves in- 
dolence, and its concomitant maladies, to be endured by 
her horses. In this, see at once the preservative of her 
health and personal charms. But when you go to Auteuil, 
you must have your carriage, though it is no farther from 
Passy to Auteuil than from Auteuil to Passy. 

Franklin. Your reasonings grow very tiresome. 

Gout. I stand corrected. I will be silent and continue 
my office ; take that, and that. 

Franklin. Oh! Ohh! Talk on, I pray you. 

Gout. No, no; I have a good number of twinges for 
you to-night, and you may be sure of some more to- 
morrow. 

Franklin. What, with such a fever! I shall go dis- 
tracted. Oh ! eh ! Can no one bear it for me ? 

Gout. Ask that of your horses; they have served you 
faithfully. 

Franklin. How can you so cruelly sport with my 
torments ? 



Dialogue Between Franklin and the Gout ii 

Gout. Sport! I am very serious. I have here a Hst 
of offenses against your own heakh distinctly written, and 
can justify every stroke inflicted on you. 

Franklin. Read it then. 

Gout. It is too long a detail ; but I will briefly mention 
some particulars. 

Franklin. Proceed. I am all attention. 

Gout. Do you remember how often you have promised 
yourself, the following morning, a walk in the grove of 
Boulogne, in the garden de la Muette, or in your own 
garden, and have violated your promise, alleging, at one 
time, it was too cold, at another too warm, too windy, too 
moist, or what else you pleased ; when in truth it was too 
nothing, but your insuperable love of ease? 

Franklin. That I confess may have happened occa- 
sionally, probably ten times in a year. 

Gout. Your confession is very far short of the truth; 
the gross amount is one hundred and ninety-nine times. 

Franklin. Is it possible? 

Gout. So possible, that it is fact; you may rely on the 
accuracy of my statement. You know M. Brillon's gar- 
dens, and what fine walks they contain; you know the 
handsome flight of an hundred steps, which lead from the 
terrace above to the lawn below. You have been in the 
practice of visiting this amiable family twice a week, after 
dinner, and it is a maxim of your own, that " a man may 
take as much exercise in walking a mile, up and down 
stairs, as in ten on level ground." What an opportunity 
was here for you to have had exercise in both these ways ! 
Did you embrace it, and how often? 

Franklin. I cannot immediately answer that ques- 
tion. 

Gout. I will do it for you; not once. 

Franklin. Not once? 



12 American Essays 

Gout. Even so. During the summer you went there 
at six o'clock. You found the charming lady, with her 
lovely children and friends, eager to walk with you, and 
entertain you with their agreeable conversation; and what 
has been your choice? Why, to sit on the terrace, satisfy 
yourself with the fine prospect, and passing your eye over 
the beauties of the garden below, without taking one step 
to descend and walk about in them. On the contrary, you 
call for tea and the chess-board ; and lo ! you are occupied 
in your seat till nine o'clock, and that besides two hours' 
play after dinner; and then, instead of walking home, 
which would have bestirred you a little, you step into your 
carriage. How absurd to suppose that all this careless- 
ness can be reconcilable with health, without my inter- 
position ! 

Franklin. I am convinced now of the justness of 
Poor Richard's remark, that " Our debts and our sins are 
always greater than we think for." 

Gout. So it is. You philosophers are sages in your 
maxims, and fools in your conduct. 

Franklin. But do you charge among my crimes, that 
I return in a carriage from M. Brillon's? 

Gout. Certainly; for, having been seated all the while, 
you cannot object the fatigue of the day, and cannot want 
therefore the relief of a carriage. 

Franklin. What then would you have me do with my 
carriage ? 

Gout. Burn it if you choose; you would at least get 
heat out of it once in this way ; or, if you dislike that pro- 
posal, here's another for you ; observe the poor peasants, 
who work in the vineyards and grounds about the villages 
of Passy, Auteuil, Chaillot, etc. ; you may find every day 
among these deserving creatures, four or five old men and 
women, bent and perhaps crippled by weight of years, and 



Dialogue Between Franklin and the Gout 13 

too long and too great labor. After a most fatiguing day, 
these people have to trudge a mile or two to their smoky 
huts. Order your coachman to set them down. This is 
an act that will be good for your soul; and, at the same 
time, after your visit to the Brillons, if you return on foot, 
that will be good for your body. 

Franklin. Ah! how tiresome you are! 

Gout. Well, then, to my office ; it should not be forgot- 
ten that I am your physician. There. 

Franklin. Ohhh ! what a devil of a physician ! 

Gout. How ungrateful you are to say so! Is it not I 
who, in the character of your physician, have saved you 
from the palsy, dropsy, and apoplexy? one or other of 
which would have done for you long ago, but for me. 

Franklin. I submit, and thank you for the past, but 
entreat the discontinuance of your visits for the future; 
for, in my mind, one had better die than be cured so dole- 
fully. Permit me just to hint, that I have also not been 
unfriendly to you. I never feed physician or quack of any 
kind, to enter the list against you ; if then you do not 
leave me to my repose, it may be said you are ungrateful 
too. 

Gout. I can scarcely acknowledge that as any objection. 
As to quacks, I despise them ; they may kill you indeed, 
but cannot injure me. And, as to regular physicians, they 
are at last convinced that the gout, in such a subject as you 
are, is no disease, but a remedy; and wherefore cure a 
remedy ? — but to our business, — there. 

Franklin. Oh! oh! — for Heaven's sake leave me! and 
I promise faithfully never more to play at chess, but to 
take exercise daily, and live temperately. 

Gout. I know you too well. You promise fair; but, 
after a few months of good health, you will return to your 
old habits; your fine promises will be forgotten like the 



14 American Essays 

forms of the last year's clouds. Let us then finish the ac- 
count, and I will go. But I leave you with an assurance 
of visiting you again at a proper time and place; for my 
object is your good, and you are sensible now that I am 
your real friend. 



CONSOLATION FOR THE OLD BACHELOR 
Francis Hopkinson 

Mr. Aitken: Your Old Bachelor having pathetically 
represented the miseries of his solitary situation, severely 
reproaching himself for having neglected to marry in his 
younger days, I would fain alleviate his distress, by show- 
ing that it is possible he might have been as unhappy — even 
in the honorable state of matrimony. 

I am a shoemaker in this city, and by my industry and 
attention have been enabled to maintain my wife and a 
daughter, now six years old, in comfort and respect ; and to 
lay by a little at the year's end, against a rainy day. 

My good wife had long teased me to take her to New 
York, in order to visit Mrs. Snip, the lady of an eminent 
taylor in that city, and her cousin; from whom she had 
received many pressing invitations. 

This jaunt had been the daily subject of discussion at 
breakfast, dinner, and supper for a month before the time 
fixed upon for putting it in execution. As our daughter 
Jenny could by no means be left at home, many and great 
were the preparations to equip Miss and her Mamma for 
this important journey; and yet, as my wife assured me, 
there was nothing provided but what was absolutely neces- 
sary, and which we could not possibly do without. My 
purse sweat at every pore. 

At last, the long-expected day arrived, preceded by a 
very restless night. For, as my wife could not sleep for 
thinking on the approaching jaunt, neither would she suf- 

15 



i6 American Essays 

fer me to repose in quiet. If I happened through weari- 
someness to fall into a slumber, she immediately roused 
me by some unseasonable question or remark : frequently 
asking if I was sure the apprentice had greased the chair- 
wheels, and seen that the harness was clean and in good 
order; often observing how surprised her cousin Snip 
would be to see us; and as often wondering how poor 
dear Miss Jenny would bear the fatigue of the journey. 
Thus past the night in delightful discourse, if that can 
with propriety be called a discourse, wherein my wife was 
the only speaker — my replies never exceeding the mono- 
syllables yes or no, murmured between sleeping and waking. 

No sooner was it fair daylight, but up started my no- 
table wife, and soon roused the whole family. The little 
trunk was stuffed with baggage, even to bursting, and tied 
behind the chair, and the chair-box was crammed with 
trumpery which we could not possibly do without. Miss 
Jenny was drest, and breakfast devoured in haste : the 
old negro wench was called in, and the charge of the house 
committed to her care; and the two apprentices and the 
hired maid received many wholesome cautions and instruc- 
tions for their conduct during our absence, all which they 
most liberally promised to observe; whilst I attended, with' 
infinite patience, the adjustment of these preliminaries. 

At length, however, we set off, and, turning the first 
corner, lost sight of our habitation, with great regret on my 
part, and no less joy on the part of Miss Jenny and her 
Mamma. 

When we got to Poole's Bridge, there happened to be a 
great concourse of wagons, carts, &c., so that we could not 
pass for some time — Miss Jenny frightened — my wife very 
impatient and uneasy — wondered I did not call out to those 
impudent fellows to make way for us; observing that I 
had not the spirit of a louse. Having got through this 



Consolation for the Old Bachelor 17 

difficulty, we proceeded without obstruction — my wife in 
good-humor again — Miss Jenny in high spirits. At Ken- 
sington fresh troubles arise. " Bless me, Miss Jenny/' says 
my wife, *' where is the bandbox ? " " 1 don't know, 
Mamma ; the last time I saw it, it was on the table in your 
room." What's to be done? The bandbox is left behind 
— it contains Miss Jenny's new wire-cap — there is no pos- 
sibility of doing without it — as well no New York as no 
wire-cap — there is no alternative, we must e'en go back for 
it. Teased and mortified as I was, my good wife adminis- 
tered consolation by observing, /' That it was my business 
to see that everything was put into the chair that ought 
to be, but there was no depending upon me for anything; 
and that she plainly saw I undertook this journey with an 
ill-will, merely because she had set her heart upon it." 
Silent patience was my only remedy. An hour and a half 
restored to us this essential requisite— -the wire-cap — and 
brought us back to the place where we first missed it. 

After innumerable difficulties and unparalleled dangers, 
occasioned by ruts, stumps, and tremendous bridges, we 
arrived at Neshamony ferry: but how to cross it was the 
question. My wife protested that neither she nor Jenny 
would go over in the boat with the horse. I assured her 
that there was not the least danger; that the horse was as 
quiet as a dog, and that I would hold him by the bridle all 
the way. These assurances had little weight: the most 
forcible argument was that she must go that way or not at 
all, for there was no other boat to be had. Thus persuaded, 
she ventured in — the flies were troublesome — the horse 
kicked — my wife in panics — Miss Jenny in tears. Ditto at 
Trenton-ferry. 

As we started pretty early, and as the days were long, 
we reached Trenton by two o'clock. Here we dined. My 
wife found fault with everything; and whilst she disposed 



i8 American Essays , 

of what I thought a tolerable hearty meal, declared there 
was nothing fit to eat. Matters, however, would have gone 
on pretty well, but Miss Jenny began to cry with the tooth- 
ache — sad lamentations over Miss Jenny — all my fault be- 
cause I had not made the glazier replace a broken pane in 
her chamber window. N. B. I had been twice for him, 
and he promised to come, but was not so good as his word. 

After dinner we again entered upon our journey — my 
wife in good-humor — Miss Jenny's toothache much easier — 
various chat — I acknowledge everything my wife says for 
fear of discomposing her. We arrive in good time at 
Princetown. My wife and daughter admire the College. We 
refresh ourselves with tea, and go to bed early, in order to 
be up by times for the next day's expedition. 

In the morning we set off again in tolerable good-humor, 
and proceeded happily as far as Rocky-hill. Here my wife's 
fears and terrors returned with great force. I drove as 
carefully as possible; but coming to a place where one of 
the wheels must unavoidably go over the point of a small 
rock, my wife, in a great fright, seized hold of one of the 
reins, which happening to be the wrong one, she pulled the 
horse so as to force the wheel higher up the rock than it 
would otherwise have gone, and overset the chair. We 
were all tumbled hickledy-pickledy, into the road — Miss 
Jenny s face all bloody — the woods echo to her cries — my 
wife in a fainting-fit — and I in great misery; secretly and 
most devoutly wishing cousin Snip at the devil. Matters 
begin to mend — my wife recovers — Miss Jenny has only re- 
ceived a slight scratch on one of her cheeks — the horse 
stands quite still, and none of the harness broke. Matters 
grew worse again; the twine with which the bandbox was 
tied had broke in the fall, and the aforesaid wire-cap lay 
soaking in a nasty mudpuddle — grievous lamentations over 
the wire-cap — all my fault because I did not tie it better — . 



Consolation for the Old Bachelor 19 

no remedy — no wire-caps to be bought at Rocky-hill. At 
night my wife discovered a small bruise on her hip — was 
apprehensive it might mortify — did not know but the bone 
might be broken or splintered — many instances of mortifica- 
tions occasioned by small injuries. 

After passing unhurt over the imminent dangers of 
Passayack and Hackensack rivers, and the yet more tre- 
mendous horrors of Pawlas-hook ferry, we arrived, at the 
close of the third day, at cousin Snip's in the city of New 
York. 

Here we sojourned a tedious week; my wife spent as 
much money as would have maintained my family for a 
month at home, in purchasing a hundred useless articles 
which we could not possibly do without; and every night 
when we went to bed fatigued me with encomiums on her 
cousin Snip ; leading to a history of the former grandeur of 
her family, and concluding with insinuations that I did not 
treat her with the attention and respect I ought. 

On the seventh day my wife and cousin Snip had a pretty 
warm altercation respecting the comparative elegancies and 
advantages of New York and Philadelphia. The dispute 
ran high, and many aggravating words past between the 
two advocates. The next morning my wife declared that 
my business would not admit of a longer absence from home 
— and so after much ceremonious complaisance — in which 
my wife was by no means exceeded by her very polite 
cousin — we left the famous city of New York; and I with 
heart-felt satisfaction looked forward to the happy period 
of our safe arrival in Water-street, Philadelphia. 

But this blessing was not to be obtained without much 
vexation and trouble. But lest I should seem tedious I 
shall not recount the adventures of our return — how we 
were caught in a thunderstorm — how our horse failed, by 
which we were benighted three miles from our stage — how 



20 American Essays 

my wife's panics returned — how Miss Jenny howled, and 
how very miserable I was made. Suffice it to say, that, 
after many distressing disasters, we arrived at the door of 
our own habitation in Water-street. 

No sooner had we entered the house than we were in- 
formed that one of my apprentices had run away with the 
hired-maid, nobody knew where; the old negro had got 
drunk, fallen into the fire, and burnt out one of her 
eyes ; and our best china-bowl was broken. 

My good wife contrived, with her usual ingenuity, to 
throw the blame of all these misfortunes upon me. As this 
was a consolation to which I had been long accustomed in 
all untoward cases, I had recourse to my usual remedy, 
viz., silent patience. After sincerely praying that I might 
never more see cousin Snip, I sat industriously down to 
my trade, in order to retrieve my manifold losses. 

This is only a miniature picture of the married state, 
which I present to your Old Bachelor, in hopes it may 
abate his choler, and reconcile him to a single life. But, if 
this' opiate should not be sufficient to give him some ease, I 
may, perhaps, send him a stronger dose hereafter. 



JOHN BULL 

Washington Irving 

" An old song, made by an aged old pate, 
Of an old worshipful gentleman who had a great estate, 
That kept a brave old house at a bountiful rate, 
And an old porter to relieve the poor at his gate. 
With an old study fill'd full of learned old books. 
With an old reverend chaplain, you might know him by his looks, 
With an old buttery hatch worn quite off the hooks, 
And an old kitchen that maintained half-a-dozen old cooks. 
Like an old courtier, etc." 

— Old Song. 

There is no species of humor in which the English more 
excel, than that which consists in caricaturing and giving 
ludicrous appellations, or nicknames. In this way they 
have whimsically designated, not merely individuals, but 
nations ; and, in their fondness for pushing a joke, they have 
not spared even themselves. One would think that, in per- 
sonifying itself, a nation would be apt to picture something 
grand, heroic and imposing, but it is characteristic of the 
peculiar humor of the English, and of their love for what 
is blunt, comic, and familiar, that they have embodied their 
national oddities in the figure of a sturdy, corpulent old 
fellow, with a three-cornered hat, red waistcoat, leather 
breeches, and stout oaken cudgel. Thus they have taken a 
singular delight in exhibiting their most private foibles in 
a laughable point of view; and have been so successful in 
their delineations, that there is scarcely a being in actual 
existence more absolutely present to the public mind than 
that eccentric personage, John Bull 

21 



22 American Essays 

Perhaps the continual contemplation of the character thus 
drawn of them has contributed to fix it upon the nation; 
and thus to give reality to what at first may have been 
painted in a great measure from the imagination. Men 
are apt to acquire peculiarities that are continually ascribed 
to them. The common orders of English seem wonderfully 
captivated with the bean ideal which they have formed of 
John Bull, and endeavor to act up to the broad caricature 
that is perpetually before their eyes. Unluckily, they some- 
times make their boasted Bull-ism an apology for their 
prejudice or grossness; and this I have especially noticed 
among those truly homebred and genuine sons of the soil 
who have never migrated beyond the sound of Bow-bells. 
If one of these should be a little uncouth in speech, and 
apt to utter impertinent truths, he confesses that he is a 
real John Bull, and always speaks his mind. If he now 
and then flies into an unreasonable burst of passion about 
trifles, he observes, that John Bull is a choleric old blade, 
but then his passion is over in a moment, and he bears no 
malice. If he betrays a coarseness of taste, and an insensi- 
bility to foreign refinements, he thanks heaven for his 
ignorance — he is a plain John Bull, and has no relish for 
frippery and nicknacks. His very proneness to be gulled 
by strangers, and to pay extravagantly for absurdities, is 
excused under the plea of munificence — for John is always 
more generous than wise. 

Thus, under the name of John Bull, he will contrive to 
argue every fault into a merit, and will frankly convict 
himself of being the honestest fellow in existence. 

However little, therefore, the character may have suited 
in the first instance, it has gradually adapted itself to the 
nation, or rather they have adapted themselves to each 
other; and a stranger who wishes to study English pe- 
culiarities, may gather much valuable information from 



John" Bull 23 

the innumerable portraits of John Bull, as exhibited in 
the windows of the caricature-shops. Still, however, he 
is one of those fertile humorists, that are continually 
throwing out new portraits, and presenting different aspects 
from different points of view ; and, oft( i as he has been 
described, I cannot resist the temptation to give a slight 
sketch of him, such as he has met my eye. 

John Bull, to all appearance, is a plain downright matter- 
of-fact fellow, with much less of poetry about him than 
rich prose. There is little of romance in his nature, but 
a vast deal of strong natural feeling. He excels in humor 
more than in wit ; is jolly rather than gay ; melancholy 
rather than morose ; can easily be moved to a sudden tear, 
or surprised into a broad laugh; but he loathes sentiment, 
and has no turn for light pleasantry. He is a boon com- 
panion, if you allow him to have his humor, and to talk 
about himself; and he will stand by a friend in a quarrel, 
with life and purse, however soundly he may be cudgeled. 

In this last respect, to tell the truth, he has a propensity 
to be somewhat too ready. He is a busy-minded personage, 
who thinks not merely for himself and family, but for all 
the country round, and is most generously disposed to be 
everybody's champion. He is continually volunteering his 
services to settle his neighbors' affairs, and takes it in great 
dudgeon if they engage in any matter of consequence with- 
out asking his advice; though he seldom engages in any 
friendly office of the kind without finishing by getting into 
a squabble with all parties, and then railing bitterly at their 
ingratitude. He unluckily took lessons in his youth in the 
noble science of defense, and having accomplished himself 
in the use of his limbs and his weapons, and become a per- 
fect master at boxing and cudgel-play, he has had a trouble- 
some life of it ever since. He cannot hear of a quarrel 
between the most distant of his neighbors, but he begins 



24 American Essays 

incontinently to fumble with the head of his cudgel, and 
consider whether his interest or honor does not require that 
he should meddle in the broil. Indeed he has extended his 
relations of pride and policy so completely over the whole 
country, that no event can take place, without infringing 
some of his finely-spun rights and dignities. Couched in 
his little domain, with these filaments stretching forth in 
every direction, he is like some choleric, bottle-bellied old 
spider, who has woven his web over a whole chamber, so 
that a fly cannot buzz, nor a breeze blow, without startling 
his repose, and causing him to sally forth wrathfully from 
his den. 

Though really a good-hearted, good-tempered old fellow 
at bottom, yet he is singularly fond of being in the midst 
of contention. It is one of his peculiarities, however, that 
he only relishes the beginning of an affray ; he always goes 
into a fight with alacrity, but comes out of it grumbling 
even when victorious ; and though no one fights with more 
obstinacy to carry a contested point, yet, when the battle is 
over, and he comes to the reconciliation, he is so much 
taken up with the mere shaking of hands, that he is apt to 
let his antagonist pocket all that they have been quarreling 
about. It is not, therefore, fighting that he ought so much 
to be on his guard against, as making friends. It is difficult 
to cudgel him out of a farthing; but put him in a good 
humor, and you may bargain him out of all the money in 
his pocket. He is like a stout ship, which will weather the 
roughest storm uninjured, but roll its masts overboard in 
the succeeding calm. 

He is a little fond of playing the magnifico abroad; of 
pulling out a long purse ; flinging his money bravely about 
at boxing matches, horse races, cock fights, and carrying a 
high head among " gentlemen of the fancy :" but imme- 
diately after one of these fits of extravagance, he will be 



John Bull 25 

taken with violent qualms of economy; stop short at the 
most trivial expenditure ; talk desperately of being ruined 
and brought upon the parish ; and, in such moods, will not 
pay the smallest tradesman's bill, without violent alterca- 
tion/ He is in fact the most punctual and discontented 
paymaster in the world ; drawing his coin out of his breeches 
pocket with infinite reluctance; paying to the uttermost 
farthing, but accompanying every guinea with a growl. 

With all his talk of economy, however, he is a bountiful 
provider, and a hospitable housekeeper. His economy is 
of a whimsical kind, its chief object being to devise how 
he may afford to be extravagant; for he will begrudge 
himself a beefsteak and pint of port one day, that he may 
roast an ox whole, broach a hogshead of ale, and treat all 
his neighbors on the next. 

His domestic establishment is enormously expensive : not 
so much from any great outward parade, as from the great 
consumption of solid beef and pudding; the vast number 
of followers he feeds and clothes ; and his singular disposi- 
tion to pay hugely for small services. He is a most kind 
and indulgent master, and, provided his servants humor 
his peculiarities, flatter his vanity a little now and then, and 
do not peculate grossly on him before his face, they may 
manage him to perfection. Everything that lives on him 
seems to thrive and grow fat. His house-servants are well 
paid, and pampered, and have little to do. His horses are 
sleek and lazy, and prance slowly before his state carriage; 
and his house-dogs sleep quietly about the door, and will 
hardly bark at a housebreaker. 

His family mansion is an old castellated manor-house, 
gray with age, and of a most venerable, though weather- 
beaten appearance. It has been built upon no regular 
plan, but is a vast accumulation of parts, erected in va- 
rious tastes and ages. The center bears evident traces of 



26 American Essays 

Saxon architecture, and is as solid as ponderous stone and 
old English oak can make it. Like all the relics of that 
style, it is full of obscure passages, intricate mazes, and 
dusky chambers; and though these have been partially 
lighted up in modern days, yet there are many places where 
you must still grope in the dark. Additions have been 
made to the original edifice from time to time, and great 
alterations have taken place; towers and battlements have 
been erected during wars and tumults: wings built in time 
of peace; and out-houses, lodges, and offices, run up ac- 
cording to the whim or convenience of different generations, 
until it has become one of the most spacious, rambling tene- 
ments imaginable. An entire wing is taken up with the 
family chapel, a reverend pile, that must have been exceed- 
ingly sumptuous, and, indeed, in spite of having been 
altered and simplified at various periods, has still a look of 
solemn religious pomp. Its walls within are stored with the 
monuments of John's ancestors; and it is snugly fitted up 
with soft cushions and well-lined chairs, where such of 
his family as are inclined to church services, may doze 
comfortably in the discharge of their duties. 

To keep up this chapel has cost John much money; 
but he is stanch in his religion, and piqued in his 
zeal, from the circumstance that many dissenting chapels 
have been erected in his vicinity, and several of his 
neighbors, with whom he has had quarrels, are strong 
papists. 

To do the duties of the chapel he maintains, at a large 
expense, a pious and portly family chaplain. He is a most 
learned and decorous personage, and a truly well-bred 
Christian, who always backs the old gentleman in his opin- 
ions, winks discreetly at his little peccadilloes, rebukes the 
children when refractory, and is of great use in exhorting 
the tenants to read their Bibles, say their prayers, and, 



John Bull 2J 

above all, to pay their rents punctually, and without 
grumbling. 

The family apartments are in a very antiquated taste, 
somewhat heavy, and often inconvenient, but full of the 
solemn magnificence of former times; fitted up with rich, 
though faded tapestry, unwieldy furniture, and loads of 
massy gorgeous old plate. The vast fireplaces, ample 
kitchens, extensive cellars, and sumptuous banqueting halls, 
all speak of the roaring hospitality of days of yore, of which 
the modern festivity at the manor-house is but a shadow. 
There are, however, complete suites of rooms apparently 
deserted and time-worn ; and towers and turrets that are 
tottering to decay ; so that in high winds there is danger of 
their tumbling about the ears of the household. 

John has frequently been advised to have the old edifice 
thoroughly overhauled ; and to have some of the useless parts 
pulled down, and the others strengthened with their mate- 
rials ; but the old gentleman always grows testy on this sub- 
ject. He swears the house is an excellent house — that it is 
tight and weather proofs and not to be shaken by tempests — 
that it has stood for several hundred years, and, therefore, 
is not likely to tumble down now — that as to its being incon- 
venient, his family is accustomed to the inconveniences, and 
would not be comfortable without them — that as to its un- 
wieldy size and irregular construction, these result from its 
being the growth of centuries, and being improved by the 
wisdom of every generation — that an old family, like his, 
requires a large house to dwell in ; new, upstart families may 
live in modern cottages and snug boxes ; but an old English 
family should inhabit an old English manor-house. If you 
point out any part of the building as superfluous, he insists 
that it is material to the strength or decoration of the rest, 
and the harmony of the whole; and swears that the parts 



28 American Essays 

are so built into each other, that if you pull down one, you 
run the risk of having the whole about your ears. 

The secret of the matter is, that John has a great disposi- 
tion to protect and patronize. He thinks it indispensable to 
the dignity of an ancient and honorable family, to be boun- 
teous in its appointments, and to be eaten up by dependents ; 
and so, partly from pride, and partly from kind-hearted- 
ness, he makes it a rule always to give shelter and mainte- 
nance to his superannuated servants. 

The consequence is, that, like many other venerable 
family establishments, his manor is encumbered by old re- 
tainers whom he cannot turn off, and an old style which he 
cannot lay down. His mansion is like a great hospital of 
invalids, and, with all its magnitude, is not a whit too large 
for its inhabitants. Not a nook or corner but is of use in 
housing some useless personage. Groups of veteran beef- 
eaters, gouty pensioners, and retired heroes of the buttery 
and the larder, are seen lolling about its walls, crawling 
over its lawns, dozing under its trees, or sunning them- 
selves upon the benches at its doors. Every office and out- 
house is garrisoned by these supernumeraries and their 
families; for they are amazingly prolific, and when they 
die off, are sure to leave John a legacy of hungry mouths 
to be provided for. A mattock cannot be struck against 
the most mouldering tumble-down tower, but out pops, 
from some cranny or loop-hole, the gray pate of some 
superannuated hanger-on, who has lived at John's expense 
all his life, and makes the most grievous outcry at their 
pulling down the roof from over the head of a worn-out 
servant of the family. This is an appeal that John's honest 
heart never can withstand ; so that a man, who has faithfully 
eaten his beef and pudding all his life, is sure to be re- 
warded with a pipe and tankard in his old days. 

A great part of his park, also, is turned into paddocks, 



John Bull 29 

where his broken-down chargers are turned loose to graze 
undisturbed for the remainder of their existence — a worthy 
example of grateful recollection, which if some of his neigh- 
bors were to imitate, would not be to their discredit. In- 
deed, it is one of his great pleasures to point out these old 
steeds to his visitors, to dwell on their good quahties, extol 
their past services, and boast, with some little vainglory, 
of the perilous adventures and hardy exploits through 
which they have carried him. 

He is given, however, to indulge his veneration for family 
usages, and family encumbrances, to a whimsical extent. 
His manor is infested by gangs of gipsies ; yet he will not 
suffer them to be driven off, because they have infested the 
place time out of mind, and been regular poachers upon 
every generation of the family. He will scarcely permit a 
dry branch to be lopped from the great trees that surround 
the house, lest it should molest the rooks, that have bred 
there for centuries. Owls have taken possession of the 
dovecote ; but they are hereditary owls, and must not be 
disturbed. Swallows have nearly choked up every chimney 
with their nests ; martins build in every frieze and cornice ; 
crows flutter about the towers, and perch on every weather- 
cock; and old gray-headed rats may be seen in every 
quarter of the house, running in and out of their holes un- 
dauntedly in broad daylight. In short, John has such a 
reverence for everything that has been long in the family, 
that he will not hear even of abuses being reformed, be- 
cause they are good old family abuses. 

All those whims and habits have concurred woefully to 
drain the old gentleman's purse; and as he prides himself 
on punctuality in money matters, and wishes to maintain 
his credit in the neighborhood, they have caused him great 
perplexity in meeting his engagements. This, too, has been 
increased by the altercations and heart-burnings which are 



30 American Essays 

continually taking place in his family. His children have 
been brought up to different callings, and are of different 
ways of thinking; and as they have always been allowed 
to speak .their minds freely, they do not fail to exercise the 
privilege most clamorously in the present posture of his 
affairs. Some stand up for the honor of the race, and are 
clear that the old establishment should be kept up in all its 
state, whatever may be the cost; others, who are more 
prudent and considerate, entreat the old gentleman to re- 
trench his expenses, and to put his whole system of house- 
keeping on a more moderate footing. He has, indeed, at 
times, seemed inclined to listen to their opinions, but their 
wholesome advice has been completely defeated by the 
obstreperous conduct of one of his sons. This is a noisy, 
rattle-pated fellow, of rather low habits, who neglects his 
business to frequent ale-houses — is the orator of village 
clubs, and a complete oracle among the poorest of his 
father's tenants. No sooner does he hear any of his 
brothers mention reform or retrenchment, than up he 
jumps, takes the words out of their mouths, and roars out 
for an overturn. When his tongue is once going nothing 
can stop it. He rants about the room ; hectors the old man 
about his spendthrift practices ; ridicules his tastes and pur- 
suits ; insists that he shall turn the old servants out of doors ; 
give the broken-down horses to the hounds; send the fat 
chaplain packing, and take a field-preacher in his place — 
nay, that the whole family mansion shall be leveled with 
the ground, and a plain one of brick and mortar built in its 
place. He rails at every social entertainment and family 
festivity, and skulks away growling to the ale-house when- 
ever an equipage drives up to the door. Though constantly 
complaining of the emptiness of his purse, yet he scruples 
not to spend all his pocket-money in these tavern convoca- 



John Bull 31 

tions, and even runs up scores for the liquor over which 
he preaches about his father's extravagance. 

It may readily be imagined how little such thwarting 
agrees with the old cavalier's fiery temperament. He has 
become so irritable, from repeated crossings, that the mere 
mention of retrenchment or reform is a signal for a brawl 
between him and the tavern oracle.- As the latter is too 
sturdy and refractory for paternal discipline, having grown 
out of all fear of the cudgel, they have frequent scenes of 
wordy warfare, which at times run so high, that John is 
fain to call in the aid of his son Tom, an officer who has 
served abroad, but is at present living at home, on half-pay. 
This last is sure to stand by the old gentleman, right or 
wrong ; likes nothing so much as a racketing, roystering life ; 
and is ready at a wink or nod, to out saber, and flourish it 
over the orator's head, if he dares to array himself against 
paternal authority. 

These family dissensions, as usual, have got abroad, and 
are rare food for scandal in John's neighborhood. People 
begin to look wise, and shake their heads, whenever his 
affairs are mentioned. They all " hope that matters are 
not so bad with him as represented ; but when a man's 
own children begin to rail at his extravagance, things must 
be badly managed. They understand he is mortgaged over 
head and ears, and is continually dabbling with money 
lenders. He is certainly an open-handed old gentleman, but 
they fear he has lived too fast ; indeed, they never knew any 
good come of this fondness for hunting, racing, reveling 
and prize-fighting. In short, Mr. Bull's estate is a very fine 
one, and has been in the family a long time ; but, for all that, 
they have known many finer estates come to the hammer." 

What is worst of all, is the effect which these pecuniary 
embarrassments and domestic feuds have had on the poor 
man himself. Instead of that jolly round corporation, and 



32 American Iissays 

smug rosy face, which he used to present, he has of late 
become as shriveled and shrunk as a frost-bitten apple. 
His scarlet gold-laced waistcoat, which bellied out so bravely 
in those prosperous days when he sailed before the wind, 
now hangs loosely about him like a mainsail in a calm. 
His leather breeches are all in folds and wrinkles, and ap- 
parently have much ado to hold up the boots that yawn 
on both sides of his once sturdy legs. 

Instead of strutting about as formerly, with his three- 
cornered hat on one side ; flourishing his cudgel, and bring- 
ing it down every moment with a hearty thump upon the 
ground; looking everyone sturdily in the face, and trolHng 
out a stave of a catch or a drinking song; he now goes 
about whistling thoughtfully to himself, with his head 
drooping down, his cudgel tucked under his arm, and his 
hands thrust to the bottom of his breeches pockets, which 
are evidently empty. 

Such is the plight of honest John Bull at present ; yet for 
all this the old fellow's spirit is as tall and as gallant as 
ever. If you drop the least expression of sympathy or con- 
cern, he takes fire in an instant ; swears that he is the rich- 
est and stoutest fellow in the country; talks of laying out 
large sums to adorn his house or buy another estate; and 
with a valiant swagger and grasping of his cudgel, longs 
exceedingly to have another bout at quarter-staff. 

Though there may be something rather whimsical in all 
this, yet I confess I cannot look upon John's situation with- 
out strong feelings of interest. With all his odd humors and 
obstinate prejudices, he is a sterling-hearted old blade. He 
may not be so wonderfully fine a fellow as he thinks himself, 
but he is at least twice as good as his neighbors represent 
him. His virtues are all his own ; all plain, homebred, and 
unaffected. His very faults smack of the raciness of his good 
qualities. His extravagance savors of his generosity; his 



John Bull 33 

quarrelsomeness of his courage; his credulity of his open 
faith; his vanity of his pride; and his bluntness of his 
sincerity. They are all the redundancies of a rich and lib- 
eral character. He is like his own oak, rough without, 
but sound and solid within; whose bark abounds with ex- 
crescences in proportion to the growth and grandeur of 
the timber; and whose branches make a fearful groaning 
and murmuring in the least storm, from their very magni- 
tude and luxuriance. There is something, too, in the ap- 
pearance of his old family mansion that is extremely 
poetical and picturesque ; and, as long as it can be rendered 
comfortably habitable, I should almost tremble to see it 
meddled with, during the present conflict of tastes and 
opinions. Some of his advisers are no doubt good archi- 
tects, that might be of service; but many, I fear, are mere 
levelers, who, when they had once got to work with their 
mattocks on this venerable edifice, would never stop until 
they had brought it to the ground, and perhaps buried 
themselves among the ruins. All that I wish is, that John's 
present troubles may teach him more prudence in future. 
That he may cease to distress his mind about other peo- 
ple's affairs; that he may give up the fruitless attempt to 
promote the good of his neighbors, and the peace and 
happiness of the world, by dint of the cudgel ; that he may 
remain quietly at home ; gradually get his house into re- 
pair; cultivate his rich estate according to his fancy; hus- 
band his income — if he thinks proper; bring his unruly 
children into order — if he can; renew the jovial scenes of 
ancient prosperity; and long enjoy, on his paternal lands, a 
green, an honorable, and a merry old age. 



THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE 

a colloquy in westminster abbey 

Washington Irving 

" I know that all beneath the moon decays, 
And what by mortals in this world is brought, 
In time's great period shall return to nought. 

I know that all the muse's heavenly lays, 
With toil of sprite which are so dearly bought, 
As idle sounds, of few or none are sought. 

That there is nothing lighter than mere praise." 

— Drummond of Hawthornden. 

There are certain half -dreaming moods of mind, in which 
we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek 
some quiet haunt, where we may indulge our reveries and 
build our air castles undisturbed. In such a mood I was 
loitering about the old gray cloisters of Westminster Abbey, 
enjoying that luxury of wandering thought which one is 
apt to dignify with the name of reflection; when suddenly 
an interruption of madcap boys from Westminster School, 
playing at football, broke in upon the monastic stillness of 
the place, making the vaulted passages and mouldering 
tombs echo with their merriment. I sought to take refuge 
from their noise by penetrating still deeper into the soli- 
tudes of the pile, and applied to one of the vergers for ad- 
mission to the library. He conducted me through a portal 
rich with the crumbling sculpture of former ages, which 
opened upon a gloomy passage leading to the chapter- 
house and the chamber in which doomsday book is de- 
posited. Just within the passage is a small door on the left. 

34 



The Mutability of Literature 35 

To this the verger applied a key ; it was double locked, and 
opened with some difficulty, as if seldom used. We now 
ascended a dark narrow staircase, and, passing through a 
second door, entered the library. 

I found myself in a lofty antique hall, the roof supported 
by massive joists of old English oak. It was soberly 
lighted by a row of Gothic windows at a considerable height 
from the floor, and which apparently opened upon the roofs 
of the cloisters. An ancient picture of some reverend 
dignitary of the church in his robes hung over the fireplace. 
Around the hall and in a small gallery were the books, 
arranged in carved oaken cases. They consisted principally 
of old polemical writers, and were much more worn by 
time than use. In the center of the library was a solitary 
table with two or three books on it, an inkstand without 
ink, and a few pens parched by long disuse. The place 
seemed fitted for quiet study and profound meditation. It 
was buried deep among the massive walls of the abbey, 
and shut up from the tumult of the world. I could only 
hear now and then the shouts of the school-boys faintly 
swelling from the cloisters, and the sound of a bell tolling 
for prayers, echoing soberly along the roofs of the abbey. 
By degrees the shouts of merriment grew fainter and 
fainter, and at length died away; the bell ceased to 
toll, and a profound silence reigned through the dusky 
hall. 

I had taken down a little thick quarto, curiously bound in 
parchment, with brass clasps, and seated myself at the table 
in a venerable elbow-chair. Instead of reading, however, I 
was beguiled by the solemn monastic air, and lifeless quiet 
of the place, into a train of musing. As I looked around 
upon the old volumes in their mouldering covers, thus 
ranged on the shelves, and apparently never disturbed in 
their repose, I could not but consider the library a kind of 



36 American Essays 

literary catacomb, where authors, like mummies, are piously 
entombed, and left to blacken and moulder in dusty ob- 
livion. 

How much, thought I, has each of these volumes, now 
thrust aside with such indifference, cost some aching head ! 
how many weary days ! how many sleepless nights ! How 
have their authors buried themselves in the solitude of cells 
and cloisters; shut themselves up from the face of man, 
and the still more blessed face of nature; and devoted 
themselves to painful research and intense reflection ! And 
all for what? to occupy an inch of dusty shelf — to have the 
title of their works read now and then in a future age, by 
some drowsy churchman or casual straggler like myself; 
and in another age to be lost, even to remembrance. Such 
is the amount of this boasted immortality. A mere tem- 
porary rumor, a local sound; like the tone of that bell 
which has just tolled among these towers, filling the ear 
for a moment — lingering transiently in echo — and then pass- 
ing away like a thing that was not. 

While I sat half murmuring, half meditating these un- 
profitable speculations with my head resting on my hand, I 
was thrumming with the other hand upon the quarto, until 
I accidentally loosened the clasps ; when, to my utter aston- 
ishment, the little book gave two or three yawns, like one 
awaking from a deep sleep; then a husky hem; and at 
length began to talk. At first its voice was very hoarse 
and broken, being much troubled by a cobweb which some 
studious spider had woven across it; and having probably 
contracted a cold from long exposure to the chills and damps 
of the abbey. In a short time, however, it became more 
distinct, and I soon found it an exceedingly fluent con- 
versable little tome. Its language, to be sure, was rather 
quaint and obsolete, and its pronunciation, what, in the 
present day, would be deemed barbarous; but I shall m- 



The Mutability of Literature 37 

deavor, as far as I am able, to render it in modern par- 
lance. 

It began with railings about the neglect of the world — 
about merit being suffered to languish in obscurity, and 
other such commonplace topics of literary repining, and 
complained bitterly that it had not been opened for more 
than two centuries; that the dean only looked now and 
then into the library, sometimes took down a volume or 
two, trifled with them for a few moments, and then re- 
turned them to their shelves. '' What a plague do they 
mean," said the little quarto, which I began to perceive 
was somewhat choleric, '' what a plague do they mean by 
keeping several thousand volumes of us shut up here, and 
watched by a set of old vergers, like so many beauties in a 
harem, merely to be looked at now and then by the dean? 
Books were written to give pleasure and to be enjoyed; 
and I would have a rule passed that the dean should pay 
each of us a visit at least once a year; or if he is not equal 
to the task, let them once in a while turn loose the whole 
school of Westminster among us, that at any rate we may 
now and then have an airing." 

" Softly, my worthy friend," replied I, " you are not 
aware how much better you are off than most books of 
your generation. By being stored away in this ancient 
library, you are like the treasured remains of those saints 
and monarchs, which lie enshrined in the adjoining chapels; 
while the remains of your contemporary mortals, left to the 
ordinary course of nature, have long since returned to dust." 

'' Sir," said the little tome, ruffling his leaves and looking 
big, '' I was written for all the world, not for the book- 
worms of an abbey. I was intended to circulate from hand 
to hand, like other great contemporary works ; but here 
have I been clasped up for more than two centuries, and 
might haye silently fallen a prey to these worms that ar^ 



38 American Essays 

playing the very vengeance with my intestines, if you had 
not by chance given me an opportunity of uttering a few 
last words before I go to pieces." 

" My good friend," rejoined I, *' had you been left to the 
circulation of which you speak, you would long ere this 
have been no more. To judge from your physiognomy, 
you are now well stricken in years : very few of your con- 
temporaries can be at present in existence; and those few 
owe their longevity to being immured like yourself in old 
libraries; which, suffer me to add, instead of likening to 
harems, you might more properly and gratefully have com- 
pared to those infirmaries attached to religious establish- 
ments, for the benefit of the old and decrepit, and where, by 
quiet fostering and no employment, they often endure to 
an amazingly good-for-nothing old age. You talk of your 
contemporaries as if in circulation — where do we meet 
with their works? what do we hear of Robert Groteste, of 
Lincoln? No one could have toiled harder than he for 
immortality. He is said to have written nearly two hundred 
volumes. He built, as it were, a pyramid of books to per- 
petuate his name : but, alas ! the pyramid has long since 
fallen, and only a few fragments are scattered in various 
libraries, where they are scarcely disturbed even by the 
antiquarian. What do we hear of Giraldus Cambrensis, the 
historian, antiquary, philosopher, theologian, and poet? He 
declined two bishoprics, that he might shut himself up and 
write for posterity; but posterity never inquires after his 
labors. What of Henry of Huntingdon, who, besides a 
learned history of England, wrote a treatise on the con- 
tempt of the world, which the world has revenged by for- 
getting him? What is quoted of Joseph of Exeter, styled 
the miracle of his age in classical composition? Of his 
three great heroic poems one is lost forever, excepting a 
mere fragment ; the others are known only to a few of the 



The Mutability of Literature 39 

curious in literature ; and as to his love verses and epigrams, 
they have entirely disappeared. What is in current use of 
John Wallis, the Franciscan, who acquired the name of the 
tree of life? Of William of Malmsbury; — of Simeon of 
Durham; — of Benedict of Peterborough ;— of John Hanvill 
of St. Albans;— of " 

" Prithee, friend," cried the quarto, in a testy tone, '* how 
old do you think me? You are talking of authors that 
lived long before my time, and wrote either in Latin or 
French, so that they in a manner expatriated themselves, 
and deserved to be forgotten ; ^ but I, sir, was ushered into 
the world from the press of the renowned Wynkyn de 
Worde. I was written in my own native tongue, at a time 
when the language had become fixed ; and indeed I was 
considered a model of pure and elegant English." 

(I should observe that these remarks were couched in 
such intolerably antiquated terms, that I have had infinite 
difficulty in rendering them into modern phraseology.) 

'' I cry your mercy," said I, " for mistaking your agje ; 
but it matters little : almost all the writers of your time 
have likewise passed into forgetfulness ; and De Worde's 
publications are mere literary rarities among book-collect- 
ors. The purity and stability of language, too, on which 
you found your claims to perpetuity, have been the 
fallacious dependence of authors of every age, even back to 
the times of the worthy Robert of Gloucester, who wrote 
his history in rhymes of mongrel Saxon.^ Even now many 

^ " In Latin and French hath many soueraine wittes had great 
delyte to endite, and have many noble thinges fulfilde, but certes 
there ben some that speaken their poisye in French, of which 
speche the Frenchmen have as good a fantasye as we have in 
hearying of Frenchmen's Englishe." — Chaucer's Testament of Love. 

^ " Holinshed, in his Chronicle, observes, ' afterwards, also, by 
deligent travell of Geffry Chancer and of John Gowre, in the time 
of Richard the Second, and after them of John Scogan and John 
Lydgate, monke of Berrie, our said toong was brought to an 



40 American Essays 

talk of Spenser's ' well of pure English undefiled,' as if the 
language ever sprang from a well or fountain-head, and 
was not rather a mere confluence of various tongues, per- 
petually subject to changes and intermixtures. It is this 
which has made English literature so extremely mutable, 
and the reputation built upon it so fleeting. Unless thought 
can be committed to something more permanent and un- 
changeable than such a medium, even thought must share 
the fate of everything else, and. fall into decay. This should 
serve as a check upon the vanity and exultation of the most 
popular writer. He finds the language in which he has 
embarked his fame gradually altering, and subject to the 
dilapidations of time and the caprice of fashion. He looks 
back and beholds the early authors of his country, once the 
favorites of their day, supplanted by modern writers. A 
few short ages have covered them with obscurity, and their 
merits can only be relished by the quaint taste of the book- 
worm. And such, he anticipates, will be the fate of his 
own work, which, however it may be admired in its day, 
and held up as a model of purity, will in the course of years 
grow antiquated and obsolete ; until it shall become almost 
as unintelligible in its native land as an Egyptian obelisk, 
or one of those Runic inscriptions said to exist in the deserts 
of Tartary. I declare," added I, with some emotion, 
" when I contemplate a modern library, filled with new 
works, in all the bravery of rich gilding and binding, I feel 
disposed to sit down and weep ; Hke the good Xerxes, when 
he surveyed his army, pranked out in all the splendor of 
military array, and reflected that in one hundred years 
not one of them would be in existence ! " 

excellent passe, notwithstanding that it never came unto the type 
of perfection until the time of Queen Elizabeth, wherein John 
Jewell, Bishop of Sarum, John Fox, and sundrie learned and 
excellent writers, have fully accomplished the ornature of the 
same, to their great praise and immortal commendation.' " 



The Mutability of Literature 41 

" Ah," said the Httle quarto, with a heavy sigh, '' I see 
how it is; these modern scribblers have superseded all the 
good old authors. I suppose nothing is read now-a-days 
but Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia, Sackville's stately plays, 
and Mirror for Magistrates, or the fine-spun euphuisms of 
the ' unparalleled John Lyly.' " 

'' There you are again mistaken," said I ; " the writers 
whom you suppose in vogue, because they happened to be 
so when you were last in circulation, have long since had 
their day. Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia, the immortality of 
which was so fondly predicted by his admirers,^ and which, 
in truth, is full of noble thoughts, delicate images, and 
graceful turns of language, is now scarcely ever mentioned. 
Sackville has strutted into obscurity; and even Lyly, 
though his writings were once the delight of a court, and 
apparently perpetuated by a proverb, is now scarcely known 
even by name. A whole crowd of authors who wrote and 
wrangled at the time, have likewise gone down, with all 
their writings and their controversies. Wave after wave 
of succeeding literature has rolled over them, until they 
are buried so deep, that it is only now and then that some 
industrious diver after fragments of antiquity brings up a 
specimen for the gratification of the curious. 

" For my part," I continued, " I consider this mutability 
of language a wise precaution of Providence for the benefit 
of the world at large, and of authors in particular. To 
reason from analogy, we daily behold the varied and beau- 

^ " Live ever sweete booke ; the simple image of his gentle witt, 
and the golden-pillar of his noble courage; and ever notify unto 
the world that thy writer was the secretary of eloquence, the 
breath of the muses, the honey-bee of the daintyest flowers of witt 
and arte, the pith of morale and intellectual virtues, the arme of 
Bellona in the field, the tonge of Suada in the chamber, the sprite 
of Practise in esse, and the paragon of excellency in print." — 
Harvey, Pierce's Supererogation. 



42 American Essays 

tiful tribes of vegetables springing up, flourishing, adorning 
the fields for a short time, and then fading into dust, to 
make way for their successors. Were not this the case, 
the fecundity of nature would be a grievance instead of a 
blessing. The earth would groan with rank and excessive 
vegetation, and its surface become a tangled wilderness. In 
like manner the works of genius and learning decline, and 
make way for subsequent productions. Language gradually 
varies, and with it fade away the writings of authors who 
have flourished their allotted time; otherwise, the creative 
powers of genius would overstock the world, and the mind 
would be completely bewildered in the endless mazes of 
literature. Formerly there were some restraints on this 
excessive multiplication. Works had to be transcribed by 
hand, which was a slow and laborious operation; they were 
written either on parchment, which was expensive, so that 
one work was often erased to make way for another ; or on 
papyrus, which was fragile and extremely perishable. Au- 
thorship was a limited and unprofitable craft, pursued chiefly 
by monks in the leisure and solitude of their cloisters. The 
accumulation of manuscripts was slow and costly, and con- 
fined almost entirely to monasteries. To these circum- 
stances it may, in some measure, be owing that we have 
not been inundated by the intellect of antiquity; that the 
fountains of thought have not been broken up, and modern 
genius drowned in the deluge. But the inventions of paper 
and the press have put an end to all these restraints. They 
have made everyone a writer, and enabled every mind to 
pour itself into print, and diffuse itself over the whole 
intellectual world. The consequences are alarming. The 
stream of literature has swollen into a torrent — augmented 
into a river — expanded into a sea. A few centuries since, 
five or six hundred manuscripts constituted a great library; 
but what would you say to libraries such as actually exist, 



The Mutability of Literature 43 

containing three or four hundred thousand volumes ; legions 
of authors at the same time busy; and the press going on 
with fearfully increasing activity, to double and quadruple 
the number? Unless some unforeseen mortality should 
break out among the progeny of the muse, now that she has 
become so prolific, I tremble for posterity. I fear the mere 
fluctuation of language will not be sufficient. Criticism may 
do much. It increases with the increase of literature, and 
resembles one of those salutary checks on population spoken 
of by economists. All possible encouragement, therefore, 
should be given to the growth of critics, good or bad. But 
I fear all will be in vain; let criticism do what it may, 
writers will write, printers will print, and the world will 
inevitably be overstocked with good books. It will soon 
be the employment of a lifetime merely to learn their names. 
Many a man of passable information, at the present day, 
reads scarcely anything but reviews; and before long a 
man of erudition will be little better than a mere walking 
catalogue." 

'' My very good sir," said the little quarto, yawning most 
drearily in my face, '' excuse my interrupting you, but I 
perceive you are rather given to prose. I would ask the 
fate of an author who was making some noise just as I left 
the world. His reputation, however, was considered quite 
temporary. The learned shook their heads at him, for he 
was a poor half-educated varlet, that knew little of Latin, 
and nothing of Greek, and had been obliged to run the 
country for deer-stealing. I think his name was Shak- 
speare. I presume he soon sunk into oblivion." 

'' On the contrary," said I, " it is owing to that very man 
that the literature of his period has experienced a duration 
beyond the ordinary term of English literature. There rise 
authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutabil- 
ity of language, because they have rooted themselves in the 



44 American Essays 

unchanging principles of human nature. They are Hke 
gigantic trees that we sometimes see on the banks of a 
stream; which, by their vast and deep roots, penetrating 
through the mere surface, and laying hold on the very 
foundations of the earth, preserve the soil around them 
from being swept away by the ever-flowing current, and 
hold up many a neighboring plant, and perhaps worthless- 
vv^eed, to perpetuity. Such is the case with Shakspeare, 
whom we behold defying the encroachments of time, re- 
taining in modern use the language and literature of his 
day, and giving duration to many an indifferent author, 
merely from having flourished in his vicinity. But even he, 
I grieve to say, is gradually assuming the tint of age, and 
his whole form is overrun by a profusion of commentators, 
who, like clambering vines and creepers, almost bury the 
noble plant that upholds them." 

Here the little quarto began to heave his sides and 
chuckle, until at length he broke out in a plethoric fit of 
laughter that had well nigh choked him, by reason of his 
excessive corpulency. " Mighty well ! " cried he, as soon as 
he could recover breath, " mighty well ! and so you would 
persuade me that the literature of an age is to be perpetuated 
by a vagabond deer-stealer ! by a man without learning ; by 
a poet, forsooth — a poet ! " And here he wheezed forth 
another fit of laughter, 

I confess that I felt somewhat nettled at this rudeness, 
which, however, I pardoned on account of his having flour- 
ished in a less polished age. I determined, nevertheless, not 
to give up my point. 

" Yes," resumed I, positively, " a poet; for of all writers 
he has the best chance for immortality. Others may write 
from the head, but he writes from the heart, and the heart 
will always understand him. He is the faithful portrayer of 
nature, whose features are always the same and always 



The Mutability of Literature 45 

interesting. Prose writers are voluminous and unwieldy ; 
their pages are crowded with commonplaces, and their 
thoughts expanded into tediousness. But with the true poet 
everything is terse, touching, or brilliant. He gives the 
choicest thoughts in the choicest language. He illustrates 
them by everything that he sees most striking in nature and 
art. He enriches them by pictures of human life, such as it 
is passing before him. His writings, therefore, contain the 
spirit, the aroma, if I may use the phrase, of the age in 
which he lives. They are caskets which inclose within a 
small compass the wealth of the language — its family jewels, 
which are thus transmitted in a portable form to posterity. 
The setting may occasionally be antiquated, and require now 
and then to be renewed, as in the case of Chaucer ; but the 
brilliancy and intrinsic value of the gems continue unaltered. 
Cast a look back over the long reach of literary history. 
What vast valleys of dullness, filled with monkish legends 
and academical controversies! what bogs of theological 
speculations ! what dreary wastes of metaphysics ! Here 
and there only do we behold the heaven-illuminated bards, 
elevated like beacons on their widely-separate heights, to 
transmit the pure light of poetical intelligence from age to 
age." 1 

I was just about to launch forth into eulogiums upon the 

^ " Thorow earth and waters deepe, 

The pen by skill doth passe : 
And featly nyps the worldes abuse, 

And shoes us in a glasse, 
The vertu and the vice 

Of every wight alyve ; 
The honey comb that bee doth make 

Is not so sweet in hyve, 
As are the golden leves 

That drop from poet's head ! 
Which doth surmount our common talke 

As farre as dross doth lead." 

— Churchyard. 



46 American Essays 

poets of the day, when the sudden opening of the door 
caused me to turn my head. It was the verger, who came 
to inform me that it was time to close the Hbrary. I sought 
to have a parting word with the quarto, but the worthy 
Httle tome was silent ; the clasps were closed : and it looked 
perfectly unconscious of all that had passed. I have been 
to the library two or three times since, and have endeavored 
to draw it into further conversation, but in vain; and 
whether all this rambling colloquy actually took place, or 
whether it was another of those odd day-dreams to which 
I am subject, I have never to this moment been able to 
discover. 



KEAN'S ACTING 

Richard Henry Dana 

" For, doubtless, that indeed according to art is most eloquent, 
which turns and approaches nearest to nature, from whence it came." 

— Milton. 

"Professed diversions! cannot these escape? 

We ransack tombs iov pastime; from the dust 
Call up the sleeping hero ; bid him tread 
The scene for our amusement : How like Gods 
We sit; and, wrapt in immortality, 
Shed generous tears on wretches born to die; 
Their fate deploring, to forget our own!" 

— Young. 

I HAD scarcely thought of the theater for some years, 
when Kean arrived in this country; and it was more from 
curiosity than from any other motive, that I went to see, 
for the first time, the great actor of the age. I was soon 
lost to the recollection of being in a theater, or looking upon 
a great display of the " mimic art." The simplicity, earnest- 
ness, and sincerity of his acting made me forgetful of the 
fiction, and bore me away with the power of reality and 
truth. If this be acting, said I, as I returned home, I may 
as well make the theater my school, and henceforward 
study nature at second hand. 

How can I describe one who is almost as full of beauties 
as nature itself, — who grows upon us the more we become 
acquainted with him, and makes us sensible that the first 
time we saw him in any part, however much he may have 

47 



48 American Essays 

moved us, we had but a partial apprehension of the many 
excellences of his acting? We cease to consider it as a 
mere amusement. It is an intellectual feast ; and he who 
goes to it with a disposition and capacity to relish it, will 
receive from it more nourishment for his mind, than he 
would be likely to do in many other ways in twice the time. 
Our faculties are opened and enlivened by it; our reflec- 
tions and recollections are of an elevated kind; and the 
voice which is sounding in our ears, long after we have 
left him, creates an inward harmony which is for our good. 

Kean, in truth, stands very much in that relation to other 
players whom we have seen, that Shakspeare does to other 
dramatists. One player is called classical; another makes 
fine points here, and another there; Kean makes more fine 
points than all of them together; but in him these are only 
little prominences, showing their bright heads above a 
beautifully undulated surface. A continual change is going 
on in him, partaking of the nature of the varying scenes 
he is passing through, and the many thoughts and feelings 
which are shifting within him. 

In a clear autumnal day we may see, here and there, a 
massed white cloud edged with a blazing brightness against 
a blue sky, and now and then a dark pine swinging its top 
in the wind, with the melancholy sound of the sea; but 
who can note the shifting and untiring play of the leaves 
of the wood, and their passing hues, when each seems a 
living thing full of sensations, and happy in its rich attire? 
A sound, too, of universal harmony is in our ears, and a 
wide-spread beauty before our eyes, which we cannot de- 
fine; yet a joy is in our hearts. Our delight increases in 
these, day after day, the longer we give ourselves to them, 
till at last we become, as it were, a part of the existence 
without us. So it is with natural characters. They grow 
upon us imperceptibly, till we become bound up in them, 



Kean's Acting 49 

we scarce know when or how. So, in its degree, it will fare 
with the actor who is deeply filled with nature, and is per- 
petually throwing off her beautiful evanescences. Instead 
of becoming tired of him, as we do, after a time, of others, 
he will go on giving something which will be new to the 
observing mind, and will keep the feelings alive, because 
their action will be natural. I have no doubt, that, except- 
ing those who go to a play as children look into a show- 
box, to admire and exclaim at distorted figures, and raw, 
unharmonious colors, there is no man of a moderately 
warm temperament, and with a tolerable share of insight 
into human nature, who would not find his interest in Kean 
increasing with a study of him. It is very possible that the 
excitement would lessen, but there would be a quieter 
pleasure, instead of it, stealing upon him, as he became 
familiar with the character of the acting. 

Taken within his range of characters, the versatility of 
his playing is striking. He seems not the same being, now 
representing Richard, and, again, Hamlet ; but the two 
characters alone appear before you, and as distinct in- 
dividuals who had never known or heard of each other. 
So does he become the character he is to represent, that 
we have sometimes thought it a reason why he was not 
universally better liked here, in Richard ; and that because 
the player did not make himself a little more visible, he 
must needs bear a share of our dislike of the cruel king. 
And this may be still more the case, as his construction 
of the character, whether right or wrong, creates in us an 
unmixed dislike of Richard, till the anguish of his mind 
makes him the object of pity; from which time, to the 
close, all allow that he plays the part better than anyone 
has done before him. 

In his highest-wrought passion, when the limbs and 
muscles are alive and quivering, and his gestures hurried 



50 American Essays 

and vehement, nothing appears ranted or overacted; be- 
cause he makes us feel, that, with all this, there is some- 
thing still within him struggling for utterance. The very 
breaking and harshness of his voice, in these parts, help 
to this impression, and make up, in a good degree, for this 
defect, if it be a defect here. 

Though he is on the very verge of truth in his passionate 
parts, he does not fall into extravagance ; but runs along 
the dizzy edge of the roaring and beating sea, with feet 
as sure as we walk our parlors. We feel that he is safe, 
for some preternatural spirit upholds him as it hurries him 
onward; and while all is uptorn and tossing in the whirl 
of the passions, we see that there is a power and order 
over the whole. 

A man has feelings sometimes which can only be breathed 
out ; there is no utterance for them in words. I had hardly 
written this when the terrible " Ha ! " with which Kean 
makes Lear hail Cornwall and Regan as they enter in the 
fourth scene of the second act, came to my mind. That 
cry seemed at the time to take me up and sweep me along 
in its wild swell. No description in the world could give a 
tolerably clear notion of it; — it must be formed, as well as 
it may be, from what is here said of its effect. 

Kean's playing is sometimes but the outbreaking of in- 
articulate sounds; — the throttled struggle of rage, and the 
choking of grief, — the broken laugh of extreme suffering, 
when the mind is ready to deliver itself over to an insane 
joy, — the utterance of over-full love, which cannot and 
would not speak in express words, and that of wildering 
grief, which blanks all the faculties of man. 

No other player whom I have heard has attempted these, 
except now and then; and should anyone have made the 
trial in the various ways in which Kean gives them, prob- 
ably he would have failed. Kean thrills us with them, as if 



Kean's Acting 51 

they were wrung from him in his agony. They have not 
the appearance of study or artifice. The truth is, that the 
labor of a mind of his genius constitutes its existence and 
dehght. It is not hke the toil of ordinary men at their 
task- work. What shows effort in them comes from him 
with the freedom- and force of nature. 

Some object to the frequent use of such sounds, and to 
others they are quite shocking. But those who permit 
themselves to consider that there are really violent passions 
in man's nature, and that they utter themselves a little dif- 
ferently from our ordinary feelings, understand and feel 
their language as they speak to us in Kean, Probably no 
actor has conceived passion with the intenseness and life 
that he does. It seems to enter into him and possess him, 
as evil spirits possessed men of old. It is curious to ob- 
serve how some, who have sat very contentedly, year after 
year, and called the face-making, which they have seen, 
expression, and the stage-stride, dignity, and the noisy 
declamation, and all the rhodomontade of acting, energy 
and passion, complain that Kean is apt to be extravagant; 
when in truth he seems to be little more than a simple 
personation of the feeling or passion to be expressed at the 
time. 

It has been so common a saying, that Lear is the most 
difficult of characters to personate, that we had taken it 
for granted no man could play it so as to satisfy us. Per- 
haps it is the hardest to represent. Yet the part which has 
generally been supposed the most difficult, the insanity of 
Lear, is scarcely more so than that of the choleric old 
king. Inefficient rage is almost always ridiculous; and 
an old man, with a broken-down body and a mind falling 
in pieces from the violence of its uncontrolled passions, is in 
constant danger of exciting, along with our pity, a feeling 
of contempt. It is a chance matter to which we may be 



52 American Essays 

most moved. And this it is which makes the opening of 
Lear so difficult. 

We may as well notice here the objection which some 
make to the abrupt violence with which Kean begins in 
Lear. If this be a fault, it is Shakspeare, and not Kean, 
who is to blame ; for, no doubt, he has conceived it accord- 
ing to his author. Perhaps, however, the mistake lies in 
this case, where it does in most others, with those who put 
themselves into the seat of judgment to pass upon great 
men. 

In most instances, Shakspeare has given us the gradual 
growth of a passion, with such little accompaniments as 
agree with it, and go to make up the whole man. In Lear, 
his object being to represent the beginning and course of 
insanity, he has properly enough gone but a little back of it, 
and introduced to us an old man of good feelings enough, 
but one who had lived without any true principle of con- 
duct, and whose unruled passions had grown strong with 
age, and were ready, upon a disappointment, to make ship- 
wreck of an intellect never strong. To bring this about, 
he begins with an abruptness rather unusual; and the old 
king rushes in before us, with his passions at their height, 
and tearing him like fiends. 

Kean gives this as soon as the fitting occasion offers 
itself. Had he put more of melancholy and depression and 
less of rage into the character, we should have been much 
puzzled at his so suddenly going mad. It would have 
required the change to have been slower; and besides, his 
insanity must have been of another kind. It must have 
been monotonous and complaining, instead of continually 
varying; at one time full of grief, at another playful, and 
then wild as the winds that roared about him, and fiery and 
sharp as the lightning that shot by him. The truth with 
which he conceived this was not finer than his execution 



Kean's Acting 53 

of it. Not for a moment, in his utmost violence, did he 
suffer the imbecihty of the old man's anger to touch upon 
the ludicrous, when nothing but the justest conception and 
feeling of the character could have saved him from it. 

It has been said that Lear is a study for one who would 
make himself acquainted with the workings of an insane 
mind. And it is hardly less true, that the acting of Kean 
was an embodying of these workings. His eye, when his 
senses are first forsaking him, giving an inquiring look at 
what he saw, as if all before him was undergoing a strange 
and bewildering change which confused his brain, — the 
wandering, lost motions of his hands, which seemed feeling 
for something familiar to them, on which they might take 
hold and be assured of a safe reality, — the under monotone 
of his voice, as if he was questioning his own being, and 
what surrounded him, — the continuous, but slight, oscillat- 
ing motion of the body, — all these expressed, with fearful 
truth, the bewildered state of a mind fast unsettHng, and 
making vain and weak efforts to find its way back to its 
wonted reason. There was a childish, feeble gladness in 
the eye, and a half-piteous smile about the mouth at times, 
which one could scarce look upon without tears. As the 
derangement increased upon him, his eye lost its notice 
of objects about him, wandering over things as if he saw 
them not, and fastening upon the creatures of his crazed 
brain. The helpless and delighted fondness with which 
he clings to Edgar, as an insane brother, is another in- 
stance of the justness of Kean's conceptions. Nor does he 
lose the air of insanity, even in the fine moralizing parts, 
and where he inveighs against the corruptions of the world. 
There is a madness even in his reason. 

The violent and immediate changes of the passions in 
Lear, so difficult to manage without jarring upon us, are 
given by Kean with a spirit and with a fitness to nature 



54 American Essays 

which we had hardly thought possible. These are equally 
well done both before and after the loss of reason. The 
most difficult scene, in this respect, is the last interview 
between Lear and his daughters, Goneril and Regan, — 
(and how wonderfully does Kean carry it through!) — the 
scene which ends with the horrid shout and cry with which 
he runs out mad from their presence, as if the very brain 
had taken fire. 

The last scene which we are allowed to have of Shak- 
speare's Lear, for the simply pathetic, was played by Kean 
with unmatched power. We sink down helpless under 
the oppressive grief. It lies like a dead weight upon our 
hearts. We are denied even the relief of tears; and are 
thankful for the shudder that seizes us when he kneels to 
his daughter in the deploring weakness of his crazed grief. 

It is lamentable that Kean should not be allowed to 
show his unequaled powers in the last scene of Lear, as 
Shakspeare wrote it ; and that this mighty work of genius 
should be profaned by the miserable, mawkish sort of 
by-play of Edgar's and Cordelia's loves. Nothing can 
surpass the impertinence of the man who made the change, 
but the folly of those who sanctioned it. 

When I began, I had no other intention than that of 
giving a few general impressions made upon me by Kean's 
acting ; but, falling accidentally upon his Lear, I have been 
led, unawares, into particulars. It is only to take these as 
some of the instances of his powers in Lear, and then to 
think of him as not inferior in his other characters, and 
some notion may be formed of the effect of Kean's playing 
upon those who understand and like him. Neither this, 
nor anything I might add, would be likely to reach his 
great and various powers. 

If it could be said of anyone, it might be said of Kean, 



Kean's Acting 55 

that he does not fall behind his author, but stands forward, 
the living representative of the character he has drawn. 
When he is not playing in Shakspeare, he fills up where his 
author is wanting; and when in Shakspeare, he gives not 
only what is set down, but whatever the situation and cir- 
cumstances attendant upon the being he personates would 
naturally call forth. He seems, at the time, to have pos- 
sessed himself of Shakspeare's imagination, and to have 
given it body and form. Read any scene in Shakspeare, — 
for instance, the last of Lear that is played, — and see how 
few words are there set down, and then remember how 
Kean fills out with varied and multiplied expression and 
circumstances, and the truth of this remark will be obvious 
enough. There are few men, I believe, let them have 
studied the plays of Shakspeare ever so attentively, who 
can see Kean in them without confessing that he has helped 
them to a truer and fuller conception of the author, not- 
withstanding what their own labors had done for them. 

It is not easy to say in what character Kean plays best. 
He so fits himself to each in turn, that if the effect he 
produces at one time is less th^n at another, it is because 
of some inferiority in stage-effect in the character. Othello 
is probably the character best adapted to stage-effect, and 
Kean has an uninterrupted power over us in playing it. 
When he commands, we are awed; when his face is sensi- 
tive with love and love thrills in his soft tones, all that 
our imaginations had pictured to us is realized. His jeal- 
ousy, his hate, his fixed purposes, are terrific and deadly; 
and the groans wrung from him in his grief have the pathos 
and anguish of Esau's, when he stood before his old, blind 
father, and sent up '' an exceeding bitter cry." 

Again, in Richard, how does he hurry forward to his 
object, sweeping away all between him and it! The world 
and its affairs are nothing to him, till he gains his end. He 



56 American Essays 

is all life, and action, and haste, — he fills every part of the 
stage, and seems to do all that is done. 

I have before said that his voice is harsh and breaking 
in his high tones, in his rage, but that this defect is of little 
consequence in such places. Nor is it well suited to the 
more declamatory parts. This, again, is scarce worth con- 
sidering; for how very little is there of mere declamation 
in good English plays ! But it is one of the finest voices in 
the world for all the passions and feelings which can be 
uttered in the middle and lower tones. In Lear, — 

"If you have poison for me, I will drink it." 

And again, — ' 

" You do me wrong to take me out o' the grave. 
Thou art a soul in bliss." 

Why should I cite passages ? Can any man open upon the 
scene in which these are contained, without Kean's piteous 
looks and tones being present to him? And does not the 
mere remembrance of them, as he reads, bring tears into 
his eyes? Yet, once more,- in Othello, — 

" Had it pleased Heaven 
To try me with affliction," &c. 

In the passage beginning with 

" O, now for ever 
Farewell the tranquil mind," — 

there was " a mysterious confluence of sounds " passing 
off into infinite distance, and every thought and feeling 
within him seemed traveling with them. 

How graceful he is in Othello! It is not a practiced, 
educated grace, but the " unbought grace " of his genius, 
uttering itself in its beauty and grandeur in the movements 



Kean's Acting 57 

of the outward man. When he says to lago so touchingly, 
" Leave me, leave me, lago," and, turning from hhn, walks 
to the back of the stage, raising his hands, and bringing 
them down upon his head, with clasped fingers, and stands 
thus with his back to us, there is a grace and majesty in 
his figure which we look on with admiration. 

Talking of these things in Kean is something like read- 
ing the Beauties of Shakspeare ; for he is as true in the 
subordinate as in the great parts. But he must be content 
to share with other men of genius, and think himself for- 
tunate if one in a hundred sees his lesser beauties, and 
marks the truth and delicacy of his under-playing. For 
instance, when he has no share in the action going on, he is 
not busy in putting himself into attitudes to draw atten- 
tion, but stands or sits in a simple posture, like one with 
an engaged mind. His countenance, too, is in a state of 
ordinary repose, with but a slight, general expression of 
the character of his thoughts ; for this is all the face shows, 
when the mind is taken up in silence with its own reflec- 
tions. It does not assume marked or violent expressions, 
as in soliloquy. When a man gives utterance to his 
thoughts, though alone, the charmed rest of the body is 
broken; he speaks in his gestures too, and the countenance 
is put into a sympathizing action. 

I was first struck with this in his Hamlet; for the deep 
and quiet interest, so marked in Hamlet, made the justness 
of Kean's playing, in this respect, the more obvious. And 
since then, I have observed him attentively, and have found 
the same true acting in his other characters. 

This right conception of situation and its general effect 
seems to require almost as much genius as his conceptions 
of his characters, and, indeed, may be considered as one 
with them. He deserves praise for it ; for there is so much 
of the subtilty of nature in it, if one may so speak, that 



58 American Essays 

while a few are able, with his help, to put themselves into 
the situation, and perceive the justness of his acting in it, 
the rest, both those who like him upon the whole, as well 
as those who profess to see little in him, will be apt to 
let it pass by without observing it. 

Like most men, however, Kean receives a partial re- 
ward, at least, for his sacrifice of the praise of the many 
to what he feels to be the truth. For when he passes from 
the state of natural repose, even into that of gentle motion 
and ordinary discourse, he is immediately filled with a 
spirit and life, which he makes everyone feel who is not 
armor-proof against him. This helps to the sparkling 
brightness and warmth of his playing, the grand secret of 
which, like that of colors in a picture, lies in a just con- 
trast. We can all speculate concerning the general rules 
upon this ; but when the man of genius gives us their re- 
sults, how few are there who can trace them out with an 
observant eye, or look with a discerning satisfaction upon 
the great whole. Perhaps this very beauty in Kean has 
helped to an opinion, which, no doubt, is true, that he is, 
at times, too sharp and abrupt. I well remember, while 
once looking at a picture in which the shadow of a moun- 
tain fell, in strong outline, upon a part of a stream, I 
overheard some quite sensible people expressing their 
wonder that the artist should have made the water of two 
colors, seeing it was all one and the same thing. 

Instances of Kean's keeping of situations were striking in 
the opening of the trial scene in The Iron Chest, and 
in Hamlet, when the father's ghost tells the story of his 
death. 

The composure to which he is bent up, in the former, 
must be present with all who saw him. And, though from 
the immediate purpose, shall I pass by the startling and 
appalling change, when madness seized upon his brain, 



Kean's Acting 59 

with the swiftness and power of a fanged monster? Won- 
derfully as this last part was played, we cannot well imagine 
how much the previous calm, and the suddenness of the 
unlooked-for change from it, added to the terror of the 
scene. The temple stood fixed on its foundations; the 
(earthquake shook it, and it was a heap. Is this one of 
Kean's violent contrasts? 

While Kean listened, in Hamlet, to the father's story, 
the entire man was absorbed in deep attention, mingled 
with a tempered awe. His posture was simple, with a 
slight inclination forward. The spirit was the spirit of 
his father, whom he had loved and reverenced, and who 
was to that moment ever present in his thoughts. The 
first superstitious terror at meeting him had passed off. 
The account of his father's appearance given him by 
Horatio and the watch, and his having followed him some 
distance, had, in a degree, familiarized him to the sight, 
and he stood before us in the stillness of one who was to 
hear, then or never, what was to be told, but without that 
eager reaching forward which other players give, and which 
would be right, perhaps, in any character but that of Ham- 
let, who connects the past and what is to come with the 
present, and mingles reflection with his immediate feelings, 
however deep. 

As an instance of Kean's familiar, and, if I may be al- 
lowed to term, domestic acting, the first scene in the fourth 
act of his Sir Giles Overreach may be taken. His manner 
at meeting Lovell and through the conversation with him, 
the way in which he turns his chair and leans upon it, were 
as easy and natural as they could have been in real life, had 
Sir Giles been actually existing, and engaged at that mo- 
ment in conversation in Lovell's room. 

It is in these things, scarcely less than in the more 
prominent parts of his playing, that Kean shows himself 



6o American Essays 

the great actor. He must always make a deep impression; 
but to suppose the world at large capable of a right esti- 
mate of his different powers, would be forming a judgment 
against every-day proof. The gradual manner in which 
the character of his playing has opened upon me satisfies 
me, that in acting, as in everything else, however deep may 
be the first effect of genius upon us, we come slowly, and 
through study, to a perception of its minute beauties and 
delicate characteristics. After all, the greater part of 
men seldom get beyond the first general impression. 

As there must needs go a modicum of fault-finding along 
with commendation, it may be well to remark, that Kean 
plays his hands too much at times, and moves about the 
dress over his breast and neck too frequently in his hur- 
ried and impatient passages, and that he does not always 
adhere with sufficient accuracy to the received readings of 
Shakspeare, and that the effect would be greater, upon the 
whole, were he to be more sparing of sudden changes from 
violent voice and gesticulation to a low conversation-tone 
and subdued manner. 

His frequent use of these in Sir Giles Overreach is 
with good effect, for Sir Giles is playing his part; so, too, 
in Lear, for Lear's passions are gusty and shifting ; but, in 
the main, it is a kind of playing too marked and striking to 
bear so frequent repetition, and had better sometimes be 
spared, where, considered alone, it might be properly 
enough used, for the sake of bringing it in at some other 
place with greater effect. 

It is well to, speak of these defects, for though the little 
faults of genius, in themselves considered, but slightly af- 
fect those who can enter into its true character, yet such 
are made impatient at the thought, that an opportunity is 
given those to carp who know not how to commend. 

Though I have taken up a good deal of room, I must end 



Kean's Acting 6i 

without speaking of many things which occur to me. Some 
will be of the opinion that I have already said enough. 
Thinking of Kean as I do, I could not honestly have said 
less ; for I hold it to be a low and wicked thing to keep 
back from merit of any kind its due, — and, with Steele, that 
'' there is something wonderful in the narrowness of those 
minds which can be pleased, and be barren of bounty to 
those who please them." 

Although the self-important, out of self-concern, give 
praise sparingly, and the mean measure theirs by their 
likings or dislikings of a man, and the good even are often 
slow to allow the talents of the faulty their due, lest they 
bring the evil to repute ; yet it is the wiser as well as the 
honester course, not to disparage an excellence because 
it neighbors upon a fault, nor to take away from another 
what is his of right, with a view to our own name, nor to 
rest our character for discernment upon the promptings of 
an unkind heart. Where God has not feared to bestow 
great powers, we may not fear giving them their due; 
nor need we be parsimonious of commendation, as if there 
were but a certain quantity for distribution, and our liber- 
ality would be to our loss ; nor should we hold it safe to 
detract from another's merit, as if we could always keep 
the world blind, lest we live to see him whom we dis- 
paraged, praised, and whom we hated, loved. 

Whatever be his failings, give every man a full and 
ready commendation for that in which he excels ; it will 
do good to our own hearts, while it cheers his. Nor will it 
bring our judgment into question with the discerning; for 
enthusiasm for what is great does not argue such an un- 
happy want of discrimination as that measured and cold 
approval, which is bestowed alike upon men of mediocrity 
and upon those of gifted minds. 



GIFTS 
Ralph Waldo Emerson 

" Gifts of one who loved me, — 
'Twas high time they came; 
When he ceased to love me, 
Time they stopped for shame," 

It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that 
the world owes the world more than the world can pay, 
and ought to go into chancery, and be sold. I do not think 
this general insolvency, which involves in some sort all 
the population, to be the reason of the difficulty experienced 
at Christmas and New Year, and other times, in bestowing 
gifts; since it is always so pleasant to be generous, though 
very vexatious to pay debts. But the impediment lies in 
the choosing. If, at any time, it comes into my head that 
a present is due from me to somebody, I am puzzled what 
to give until the opportunity is gone. Flowers and fruits 
are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a proud 
assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of 
the world. These gay natures contrast with the somewhat 
stern countenance of ordinary nature; they are like music 
heard out of a workhouse. Nature does not cocker us : we 
are children, not pets : she is not fond : everything is dealt 
to us without fear or favor, after severe universal laws. 
Yet these delicate flowers look like the frolic and interfer- 
ence of love and beauty. Men used to tell us that we love 
flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it 
shows that we are of importance enough to be courted. 

62 



Gifts 63 

Something like that pleasure the flowers give us : what am 
I to whom these sweet hints are addressed? Fruits are 
acceptable gifts because they are the flower of commodities, 
and admit of fantastic values being attached to them. If a 
man should send to me to come a hundred miles to visit 
him, and should set before me a basket of fine summer 
fruit, I should think there was some proportion between the 
labor and the reward. 

For common gifts, necessity makes pertinences and 
beauty every day, and one is glad when an imperative leaves 
him no option, since if the man at the door have no shoes, 
you have not to consider whether you could procure him 
a paint-box. And as it is always pleasing to see a man eat 
bread, or drink water, in the house or out of doors, so it is 
always a great satisfaction to supply these first wants. 
Necessity does everything well. In our condition of uni- 
versal dependence, it seems heroic to let the petitioner be 
the judge of his necessity, and to give all that is asked, 
though at great inconvenience. If it be a fantastic desire, 
it is better to leave to others the office of punishing him, 
I can think of many parts I should prefer playing to that 
of the Furies. Next to things of necessity, the rule for a 
gift which one of my friends prescribed is, that we might 
convey to some person that which properly belonged to his 
character, and was easily associated with him in thought. 
But our tokens of compliment and love are for the most 
part barbarous. Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but 
apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. 
Thou must bleed for me. Therefore the poet brings his 
poem ; the shepherd, his lamb ; the farmer, corn ; the miner, 
a gem ; the sailor, coral and shells ; the painter, his picture ; 
the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing. This is right 
and pleasing, for it restores society in so far to the primary 
basis, when a man's biography is conveyed in his gift, and 



64 American Essays 

every man's wealth is an index of his merit. But it is a 
cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy me 
something, which does not represent your life and talent, 
but a goldsmith's. This is fit for kings, and rich men who 
represent kings, and a false state of property, to make 
presents of gold and silver stuffs, as a kind of symbolical 
sin-offering, or payment of blackmail. 

The law of benefits is a difficult channel, which requires 
careful sailing, or rude boats. It is not the office of a man 
to receive gifts. How dare you give them? We wish to 
be self-sustained. We do not quite forgive a giver. The 
hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten. We 
can receive anything from love, for that is a way of re- 
ceiving it from ourselves; but not from anyone who as- 
sumes to bestow. We sometimes hate the meat which we 
eat, because there seems something of degrading depend- 
ence in living by it. 

" Brother, if Jove to thee a present make, 
Take heed that from his hands thou nothing take." 

We ask the whole. Nothing less will content us. We 
arraign society if it do not give us besides earth, and fire, 
and water, opportunity, love, reverence, and objects of 
veneration. 

He is a good man who can receive a gift well. We are 
either glad or sorry at a gift, and both emotions are un- 
becoming. Some violence, I think, is done, some degrada- 
tion borne, when I rejoice or grieve at a gift. I am sorry 
when my independence is invaded, or when a gift comes 
from such as do not know my spirit, and so the act is 
not supported ; and if the gift pleases me overmuch, then I 
should be ashamed that the donor should read my heart, 
and see that I love his commodity, and not him. The gift, 
to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me, cor- 



Gifts 65 

respondent to my flowing unto him. When the waters 
are at level, then my goods pass to him, and his to me. 
All his are mine, all mine his. I say to him, How can 
you give iVie this pot of oil, or this flagon of wine, when 
all your oil and wine is mine, which belief of mine this gift 
seems to deny? Hence the fitness of beautiful, not useful 
things for gifts. This giving is flat usurpation, and there- 
fore when the beneficiary is ungrateful, as all beneficiaries 
hate all Timons, not at all considering the value of the gift, 
but looking back to the greater store it was taken from, I 
rather sympathize with the beneficiary than with the anger 
of my lord Timon. For,* the expectation of gratitude is 
mean, and is continually punished by the total insensibility 
of the obliged person. It is a great happiness to get off 
without injury and heart-burning, from one who has had 
the ill-luck to be served by you. It is a very onerous busi- 
ness, this of being served, and the debtor naturally wishes 
to give you a slap. A golden text for these gentlemen is 
that which I so admire in the Buddhist, who never thanks, 
and who says, " Do not flatter your benefactors." 

The reason for these discords I conceive to be that there 
is no commensurability between a man and any gift. You 
cannot give anything to a magnanimous person. After 
you have served him he at once puts you in debt by his 
magnanimity. The service a man renders his friend is 
trivial and selfish, compared with the service he knows his 
friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had 
begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared with 
that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my 
power to render him seems small. Besides, our action on 
each other, good as well as evil, is so incidental and at 
random, that we can seldom hear the acknowledgments of 
any person who would thank us for a benefit, without some 
shame and humiliation. We can rarely strike a direct 



66 American Essays 

stroke, but must be content with an oblique one ; we seldom 
have the satisfaction of yielding a direct benefit, which is 
directly received. But rectitude scatters favors on every 
side without knowing it, and receives with wonder the 
thanks of all people. 

I fear to breathe any treason against the majesty of love, 
which is the genius and god of gifts, and to whom we must 
not affect to prescribe. Let him give kingdoms or flower- 
leaves indifferently. There are persons from whom we 
always expect fairy-tokens ; let us not cease to expect 
them. This is prerogative, and not to be limited by our 
municipal rules. For the rest, I like to see that we cannot 
be bought and sold. The best of hospitality and of gener- 
osity is also not in the will, but in fate. I find that I am 
not much to you; you do not need me; you do not feel 
me; then am I thrust out of doors, though you proffer 
me house and lands. No services are of any value, but 
only likeness. When I have attempted to join myself to 
others by services, it proved an intellectual trick, — no 
more. They eat your service like apples, and leave you 
out. But love them, and they feel you, and delight in you 
all the time. 



USES OF GREAT MEN 
Ralph Waldo Emerson 

It is natural to believe in great men. If the companions 
of our childhood should turn out to be heroes, and their 
condition regal, it would not surprise us. All mythology 
opens with demigods, and the circumstance is high and 
poetic ; that is, their genius is paramount. In the legends of 
the Gautama, the first men ate the earth, and found it deli- 
ciously sweet. 

Nature seems to exist for the excellent. The world is 
upheld by the veracity of good men : they make the earth 
wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad 
and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our 
belief in such society; and actually or ideally we manage 
to live with superiors. We call our children and our lands 
by their names. Their names are wrought into the verbs of 
language, their works and effigies are in our houses, and 
every circumstance of the day recalls an anecdote of them. 

The search after the great is the dream of youth and 
the most serious occupation of manhood. We travel into 
foreign parts to find his works — if possible, to get a glimpse 
of him. But we are put off with fortune instead. You 
say the English are practical; the Germans are hospitable; 
in Valencia the climate is delicious ; and in the hills of the 
Sacramento there is gold for the gathering. Yes, but I 
do not travel to find comfortable, rich, and hospitable peo- 
ple, or clear sky, or ingots that cost too much. But if there 
were any magnet that would point to the countries and 

67 



68 American Essays 

houses where are the persons who are intrinsically rich 
and powerful, I would sell all, and buy it, and put myself 
on the road to-day. 

The race goes with us on their credit. The knowledge 
that in the city is a man who invented the railroad raises 
the credit of all the citizens. But enormous populations, if 
they be beggars, are disgusting, like moving cheese, like 
hills of ants or of fleas — the more, the worse. 

Our religion is the love and cherishing of these patrons. 
The gods of fable are the shining moments of great men. 
We run all our vessels into one mould. Our colossal 
theologies of Judaism, Christism, Buddhism, Mahometism, 
are the necessary and structural action of the human mind. 
The student of history is like a man going into a ware- 
house to buy cloths or carpets. He fancies he has a new 
article. If he go to the factory, he shall find that his new 
stuff still repeats the scrolls and rosettes which are found 
on the interior walls of the pyramids of Thebes. Our theism 
is the purification of the human mind. Man can paint, or 
make, or think nothing but man. He believes that the great 
material elements had their origin from his thought. And 
our philosophy finds one essence collected or distributed. 

If now we proceed to inquire into the kinds of service 
we derive from others, let us be warned of the danger of 
modern studies, and begin low enough. We must not con- 
tend against love, or deny the substantial existence of other 
people. I know not what would happen to us. We have 
social strengths. Our affection towards others creates a 
sort of vantage or purchase which nothing will supply. I 
can do that by another which I cannot do alone. I can say 
to you what I cannot first say to myself. Other men are 
lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man 
seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as 
are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men, and 



Uses of Great Men 69 

the otherest. The stronger the nature, the more it is reac- 
tive. Let us have the quahty pure. A Httle genius let us 
leave alone. A main difference betwixt men is, whether 
they attend their own affair or not. Man is that noble 
endogenous plant which grows, like the palm, from within 
outward. His own affair, though impossible to others, he 
can open with celerity and in sport. It is easy to sugar to 
be sweet, and to nitre to be salt. We take a great deal of 
pains to waylay and entrap that which of itself will fall 
into our hands. I count him a great man who inhabits a 
higher sphere of thought, into which other men rise with 
labor and difficulty ; he has but to open his eyes to see 
things in a true light, and in large relations; whilst they 
must make painful corrections, and keep a vigilant eye on 
many sources of error. His service to us is of like sort. It 
costs a beautiful person no exertion to paint her image 
on our eyes ; yet how splendid is that benefit ! It costs no 
more for a wise soul to convey his quality to other men. 
And everyone can do his best thing easiest. " Peu de 
moyens, beaucoup d'effet." |He is great who is what he is 
from nature, and who never reminds us of others. } 

But he must be related to us, and our life receive from 
him some promise of explanation. I cannot tell what I 
would know ; but I have observed there are persons who, 
in their character and actions, answer questions which I 
have not skill to put. One man answers some questions 
which none of his contemporaries put, and is isolated. The 
past and passing religions and philosophies answer some 
other question. Certain men affect us as rich possibilities, 
but helpless to themselves and to their times, — the, sport, 
perhaps, of some instinct that rules in the air, — they do 
not speak to our want. But the great are near; we know 
them at sight. They satisfy expectation, and fall into place. 
What is good is effective, generative; makes for itself 



70 American Essays 

room, food, and allies. A sound apple produces seed — a 
hybrid does not. Is a man in his place, he is constructive, 
fertile, magnetic, inundating armies with his purpose, which 
is thus executed. The river makes its own shores, and each 
legitimate idea makes its own channels and welcome — 
harvests for food, institutions for expression, weapons to 
fight with, and disciples to explain it. The true artist has 
the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of 
strife, has nothing broader than his own shoes. 

Our common discourse respects two kinds of use or 
service from superior men. Direct giving is agreeable to 
the early belief of men; direct giving of material or 
metaphysical aid, as of health, eternal youth, fine senses, 
arts of healing, magical power, and prophecy. The boy 
believes there is a teacher who can sell him wisdom. 
Churches believe in imputed merit. But, in strictness, we 
are not much cognizant of direct serving. Man is endoge- 
nous, and education is his unfolding. The aid we have 
from others is mechanical, compared with the discoveries 
of nature in us. What is thus learned is delightful in the 
doing, and the effect remains. Right ethics are central, 
and go from the soul outward. Gift is contrary to the 
law of the universe. Serving others is serving us. I must 
absolve me to myself. '' Mind thy affair," says the spirit ; 
** coxcomb, would you meddle with the skies, or with other 
people?" Indirect service is left. Men have a pictorial or 
representative quality, and serve us in the intellect. 
Behmen and Swedenborg saw that things were representa- 
tive. Men are also representative; first, of things, and 
secondly, of ideas. 

As plants convert the minerals into food for animals, so 
each man converts some raw material in nature to human 
use. The inventors of fire, electricity, magnetism, iron, 
lead, glass, linen, silk, cotton; the makers of tools; the 



Uses of Great Men 71 

inventor of decimal notation; the geometer; the engineer; 
the musician, severally make an easy v^ay for all through 
unknown and impossible confusions. Each man is, by 
secret liking, connected with some district of nature, whose 
agent and interpreter he is, as Linnaeus, of plants; Huber, 
of bees ; Fries, of lichens ; Van Mons, of pears ; Dalton, of 
atomic forms; Euclid, of lines; Newton, of fluxions. 

A man is a center for nature, running out threads of 
relation through everything, fluid and solid, material and 
elemental. The earth rolls; every clod and stone comes 
to the meridian; so every organ, function, acid, crystal, 
grain of dust, has its relation to the brain. It waits long, 
but its turn comes. Each plant has its parasite, and each 
created thing its lover and poet. Justice has already been 
done to steam, to iron, to wood, to coal, to loadstone, to 
iodine, to corn and cotton; but how few materials are yet 
used by our arts ! The mass of creatures and of qualities 
are still hid and expectant. It would seem as if each 
waited, like the enchanted princess in fairy tales, for a 
destined human deliverer. Each must be disenchanted, 
and walk forth to the day in human shape. In the history 
of discovery, the ripe and latent truth seems to have fash- 
ioned a brain for itself. A magnet must be made man, in 
some Gilbert, or Swedenborg, or Oersted, before the gen- 
eral mind can come to entertain its powers. 

If we limit ourselves to the first advantages: a sober 
grace adheres to the mineral and botanic kingdoms, which 
in the highest moments comes up as the charm of nature, 
the glitter of the spar, the sureness of affinity, the veracity 
of angles. Light and darkness, heat and cold, hunger and 
food, sweet and sour, solid, liquid, and gas, circle us round 
in a wreath of pleasures, and, by their agreeable quarrel, 
beguile the day of life. The eye repeats every day the 
first eulogy on things — '' He saw that they were good." 



^^2 American Essays 

We know where to find them ; and these performers are 
rehshed all the more after a little experience of the pre- 
tending races. We are entitled, also, to higher advantages. 
Something is wanting to science, until it has been human- 
ized. The table of logarithms is one thing, and its vital 
play, in botany, music, optics, and architecture, another. 
There are advancements to numbers, anatomy, architecture, 
astronomy, little suspected at first, when, by union with 
intellect and will, they ascend into the life, and reappear 
in conversation, character, and politics. 

But this comes later. We speak now only of our ac- 
quaintance with them in their own sphere, and the way in 
which they seem to fascinate and draw to them some 
genius who occupies himself with one thing all his life 
long. The possibility of interpretation lies in the identity 
of the observer with the observed. Each material thing 
has its celestial side ; has its translation, through humanity, 
into the spiritual and necessary sphere, where it plays a 
part as indestructible as any other. And to these, their 
ends, all things continually ascend. The gases gather to 
the solid firmament; the chemic lump arrives at the plant, 
and grows ; arrives at the quadruped, and walks ; arrives 
at the man, and thinks. But also the constituency de- 
termines the vote of the representative. He is not only 
representative, but participant. Like can only be known 
by like. The reason why he knows about them is, that he 
is of them ; he has just come out of nature, or from being 
a part of that thing. Animated chlorine knows of chlorine, 
and incarnate zinc, of zinc. Their quality makes his career ; 
and he can variously publish their virtues, because they 
compose him. Man, made of the dust of the world, does 
not forget his origin ; and all that is yet inanimate will one 
day speak and reason. Unpublished nature will have its 
whole secret told. Shall we say that quartz mountains will 



Uses of Great Men 73 

pulverize Into innumerable Werners, Von Buchs, and Beau- 
monts ; and the laboratory of the atmosphere holds in solu- 
tion I know not what Berzeliuses and Davys? 

Thus we sit by the fire, and take hold on the poles of 
the earth. This quasi omnipresence supplies the imbecility 
of our condition. In one of those celestial days, when 
heaven and earth meet and adorn each other, it seems a 
poverty, that we can only spend it once : we wish for a 
thousand heads, a thousand bodies, that we might celebrate 
its immense beauty in many ways and places. Is this 
fancy? Well, in good faith, we are multiplied by our 
proxies. How easily we adopt their labors. Every ship 
that comes to America got its chart ixom Columbus. Every 
novel is a debtor to Homer. Every carpenter who shaves 
with a foreplane borrows the genius of a forgotten in- 
ventor. Life is girt all round with a zodiac of sciences, 
the contributions of men who have perished to add their 
point of light to our sky. Engineer, broker, jurist, physi- 
cian, moralist, theologian, and every man, inasmuch as he 
has any science, is a definer and map-maker of the latitudes 
and longitudes of our condition. These road-makers on 
every hand enrich us. We must extend the area of life, 
and multiply our relations. We are as much gainers by 
finding a new property in the old earth as by acquiring a 
new planet. 

We are too passive in the reception of these material or 
semi-material aids. We must not be sacks and stomachs. 
To ascend one step — we are better served through our 
sympathy. Activity is contagious. Looking where others 
look, and conversing with the same things, we catch the 
charm which lured them. Napoleon said, " You must not 
fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all 
your art of war." Talk much with any man of vigorous 
mind, and we acquire very fast the habit of looking at 



74 American Essays 

things in the same Hght, and, on each occurrence, we an- 
ticipate his thought. 

Men are helpful through the intellect and the affections. 
Other help, I find a false appearance. If you affect to 
give me bread and fire, I perceive that I pay for it the full 
price, and at last it leaves me as it found me, neither better 
nor worse; but all mental and moral force is a positive 
good. It goes out from you, whether you will or not, and 
profits me whom you never thought of. I cannot even hear 
of personal vigor of any kind, great power of performance, 
without fresh resolution. We are emulous of all that man 
can do. Cecil's saying of Sir Walter Raleigh, " I know 
that he can toil terribly," is an electric touch. So are 
Clarendon's portraits — of Hampden : " who was of an in- 
dustry and vigilance not to be tired out or wearied by the 
most laborious, and of parts not to be imposed on by the 
most subtle and sharp, and of a personal courage equal to 
his best parts ;" — -of Falkland : " who was so severe an 
adorer of truth that he could as easily have given himself 
leave to steal as to dissemble." We cannot read Plutarch 
without a tingling of the blood; and I accept the saying of 
the Chinese Mencius : " A sage is the instructor of a hun- 
dred ages. When the manners of Loo are heard of, the 
stupid become intelligent, and the wavering, determined." 

This is the moral of biography; yet it is hard for de- 
parted men to touch the quick like our own companions, 
whose names may not last as long. What is he whom I 
never think of? whilst in every solitude are those who suc- 
cor our genius, and stimulate us in wonderful manners. 
There is a power in love to divine another's destiny better 
than that other can, and, by heroic encouragements, hold 
him to his task. What has friendship so signal as its sub- 
lime attraction to whatever virtue is in us ? We will never 
more think cheaply of ourselves, or of life. We are piqued 



Uses of Great Men 75 

to some purpose, and the industry of the diggers on the 
railroad will not again shame us. 

Under this head, too, falls that homage, very pure, as I 
think, which all ranks pay to the hero of the day, from 
Coriolanus and Gracchus, down to Pitt, Lafayette, Well- 
ington, Webster, Lamartine. Hear the shouts in the street ! 
The people cannot see him enough. They delight in a 
man. Here is a head and a trunk! What a front! What 
eyes ! Atlantean shoulders, and the whole carriage heroic, 
with equal inward force to guide the great machine ! This 
pleasure of full expression to that which, in their private 
experience, is usually cramped and obstructed, runs, also, 
much higher, and is the secret of the reader's joy in literary 
genius. Nothing is kept back. There is fire enough to 
fuse the mountain of ore. Shakspeare's principal merit 
may be conveyed in saying that he, of all men, best under- 
stands the English language, and can say what he will. 
Yet these unchoked channels and floodgates of expression 
are only health or fortunate constitution. Shakspeare's 
name suggests other and purely intellectual benefits. 

Senates and sovereigns have no compliment, with their 
medals, swords, and armorial coats, like the addressing to 
a human being thoughts out of a certain height, and pre- 
supposing his intelligence. This honor, which is possible 
in personal intercourse scarcely twice in a lifetime, genius 
perpetually pays ; contented, if now and then, in a century, 
the proffer is accepted. The indicators of the values of 
matter are degraded to a sort of. cooks and confectioners, 
on the appearance of the indicators of ideas. Genius is 
the naturalist or geographer of the supersensible regions, 
and draws their map ; and, by acquainting us with new 
fields of activity, cools our afifection for the old. These 
are at once accepted as the reality, of which the world we 
have conversed with is the show. 



y6 ' American Essays 

We go to the gymnasium and the swimming-school to 
see the power and beauty of the body ; there is the like 
pleasure, and higher benefit, from witnessing intellectual 
feats of all kinds; as feats of memory, of mathematical 
combination, great power of abstraction, the transmutings 
of the imagination, even versatility and concentration, as 
these acts expose the invisible organs and members of the 
mind, which respond, member for member, to the parts of 
the body. For we thus enter a new gymnasium, and learn 
to choose men by their truest marks, taught, with Plato, 
" to choose those who can, without aid from the eyes or 
any other sense, proceed to truth and to being." Foremost 
among these activities are the summersaults, spells, and 
resurrections wrought by the imagination. When this 
wakes, a man seems to multiply ten times or a thousand 
times his force. It opens the delicious sense of indeter- 
minate size, and inspires an audacious mental habit. We 
are as elastic as the gas of gunpowder, and a sentence in a 
book or a word dropped in conversation sets free our fancy, 
and instantly our heads are bathed with galaxies, and our 
feet tread the floor of the pit. And this benefit is real, be- 
cause we are entitled to these enlargements, and, once having 
passed the bounds, shall never again be quite the miserable 
pedants we were. 

The high functions of the intellect are so allied that some 
imaginative power usually appears in all eminent minds, 
even in arithmeticians of the first class, but especially in 
meditative men of an intuitive habit of thought. This class 
serve us, so that they. have the perception of identity and 
the perception of reaction. The eyes of Plato, Shakspeare, 
Swedenborg, Goethe, never shut on either of these laws. 
The perception of these laws is a kind of meter of the 
mind. Little minds are little, through failure to see them. 

Even these feasts have their surfeit. Our delight in 



Uses of Great Men 77 

reason degenerates into idolatry of the herald. Especially 
when a mind of powerful method has instructed men, we 
find the examples of oppression. The dominion of 
Aristotle, the Ptolemaic astronomy, the credit of Luther, of 
Bacon, of Locke, — in religion, the history of hierarchies, of 
saints, and the sects which have taken the name of each 
founder, — are in point. Alas ! every man is such a victim. 
The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of 
power. It is the delight of vulgar talent to dazzle and to 
blind the beholder. But true genius seeks to defend us 
from itself. True genius will not impoverish, but will 
liberate, and add new senses. If a wise man should appear 
in our village, he would create, in those who conversed 
with him, a new consciousness of wealth, by opening their 
eyes to unobserved advantages ; he would establish a sense of 
immovable equality, calm us with assurances that we could 
not be cheated ; as everyone would discern the checks and 
guaranties of condition. The rich would see their mistakes 
and poverty, the poor their escapes and their resources. 

But nature brings all this about in due time. Rotation is 
her remedy. The soul is impatient of masters, and eager 
for change. Housekeepers say of a domestic who has been 
valuable, *' She had lived with me long enough." We are 
tendencies, or rather symptoms, and none of us complete. 
We touch and go, and sip the foam of many lives. Rota- 
tion is the law of nature. When nature removes a great 
man, people explore the horizon for a successor; but none 
comes, and none wijl. His class is extinguished with him. 
In some other and quite different field, the next man will 
appear; not Jefferson, not Franklin, but now a great sales- 
man; than a road-contractor; then a student of fishes; then 
a buffalo-hunting explorer, or a semi-savage Western gen- 
eral. Thus we make a stand against our rougher masters ; 
but against the best there is a finer remedy. The power 



yS American Essays 

which they communicate is not theirs. When we are ex- 
ahed by ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, 
to which, also, Plato was debtor. 

I must not forget that we have a special debt to a single 
class. Life is a scale of degrees. Between rank and rank 
of our great men are wide intervals. Mankind have, in all 
ages, attached themselves to a few persons, who, either 
by the quality of that idea they embodied, or by the large- 
ness of their reception, were entitled to the position of 
leaders and law-givers. These teach us the qualities of 
primary nature — admit us to the constitution of things. 
We swim, day by day, on a river of delusions, and are 
effectually amused with houses and towns in the air, of 
which the men about us are dupes. But life is a sincerity. 
In lucid intervals we say, " Let there be an entrance 
opened for me into realties; I have worn the fool's cap too 
long." We will know the meaning of our economies and 
politics. Give us the cipher, and, if persons and things are 
scores of a celestial music, let us read off the strains. We 
have been cheated of our reason ; yet there have been sane 
men who enjoyed a rich and related existence. What they 
know they know for us. With each new mind, a new 
secret of nature transpires ; nor can the Bible be closed until 
the last great man is born. These men correct the delirium 
of the animal spirits, make us considerate, and engage us 
to new aims and powers. The veneration of mankind se- 
lects these for the highest place. Witness the multitude of 
statues, pictures, and memorials which recall their genius in 
every city, village, house, and ship : 

*' Ever their phantoms arise before us, 
Our loftier brothers, but one in blood; 
At bed and table they lord it o'er us, 

With looks of beauty, and words of good." 

How to illustrate the distinctive benefit of ideas, the 



Uses of Great Men 79 

service rendered by those who introduce moral truths into 
the general mind? — I am plagued, in all my living, with a 
perpetual tariff of prices. If I work in my garden and 
prune an apple-tree, I am well enough entertained, and 
could continue indefinitely in the like occupation. But it 
comes to mind that a day is gone, and I have got this 
precious nothing done. I go to Boston or New York, and 
run up and down on my affairs: they are sped, but so is 
the day. I am vexed by the recollection of this price I have 
paid for a trifling advantage. I remember the peau d'dne, 
on which whoso sat should have his desire, but a piece of 
the skin was gone for every wish. I go to a convention of 
philanthropists. Do what I can, I cannot keep my eyes off 
the clock. But if there should appear in the company some 
gentle soul who knows little of persons or parties, of Caro- 
lina or Cuba, but who announces a law that disposes these 
particulars, and so certifies me of the equity which check- 
mates every false player, bankrupts every self-seeker, and 
apprises me of my independence on any conditions of coun- 
try, or time, or human body, that man liberates me; I 
forget the clock. I pass out of the sore relation to persons. 
I am healed of my hurts, I am made immortal by appre- 
hending my possession of incorruptible goods. Here is 
great competition of rich and poor. We live in a market, 
where is only so much wheat, or wool, or land; and if I 
have so much more, every other must have so much less. 
I seem to have no good, without breach of good manners. 
Nobody is glad in the gladness of another, and our system 
is one of war, of an injurious superiority. Every child of 
the Saxon race is educated to wish to be first. It is our 
system; and a man comes to measure his greatness by the 
regrets, envies, and hatreds of his competitors. But in 
these new fields there is room : here are no self-esteems, no 
exclusions. 



8o American Essays 

I admire great men of all classes, those who stand for 
facts and for thoughts ; I like rough and smooth, " scourges 
of God " and " darlings of the human race." I like the 
first Caesar; and Charles V, of Spain; and Charles XII, 
of Sweden; Richard Plantagenet; and Bonaparte, in 
France. I applaud a sufficient man, an officer equal to his 
office ; captains, ministers, senators. I like a master stand- 
ing firm on legs of iron, well-born, rich, handsome, eloquent, 
loaded with advantages, drawing all men by fascination 
into tributaries and supports of his power. Sword and 
staff, or talents sword-like or stafif-like, carry on the work 
of the world. But I find him greater when he can abolish 
himself, and all heroes, by letting in this element of reason, 
irrespective of persons ; this subtilizer, and irresistible up- 
ward force, into our thought, destroying individualism ; the 
power so great that the potentate is nothing. Then he is 
a monarch who gives a constitution to his people ; a pontiff 
who preaches the equality of souls, and releases his servants 
from their barbarous homages : an emperor who can spare 
his empire. 

But I intended to specify, with a little minuteness, two or 
three points of service. Nature never spares the opium or 
nepenthe ; but, wherever she mars her creature with some 
deformity or defect, lays her poppies plentifully on the 
bruise, and the sufferer goes joyfully through life, ignorant 
of the ruin, and incapable of seeing it, though all the world 
point their finger at it every day. The worthless and of- 
fensive members of society, whose existence is a social 
pest, invariably think themselves the most ill-used people 
alive, and never get over their astonishment at the ingrati- 
tude and selfishness of their contemporaries. Our globe 
discovers its hidden virtues, not only in heroes and arch- 
angels, but in gossips and nurses. Is it not a rare contriv- 
ance that lodged the due inertia in every creature, the 



Uses of Great Men 8i 

conserving, resisting energy, the anger at being waked or 
changed? Ahogether independent of the intellectual force 
in each is the pride of opinion, the security that we are 
right. Not the feeblest grandame, not a mowing idiot, 
but uses what spark of perception and faculty is left, to 
chuckle and triumph in his or her opinion over the absurdi- 
ties of all the rest. Difference from me is the measure of 
absurdity. Not one has a misgiving of being wrong. Was 
it not a bright thought that made things cohere with this 
bitumen, fastest of cements? But, in the midst of this 
chuckle of self-gratulation, some figure goes by which 
Thersites too can love and admire. This is he that should 
marshal us the way we were going. There is no end to his 
aid. Without Plato, we should almost lose our faith in 
the possibility of a reasonable book. We seem to want but 
one, but we want one. We love to associate with heroic 
persons, since our receptivity is unlimited; and, with the 
great, our thoughts and manners easily become great. We 
are all wise in capacity, though so few in energy. ' There 
needs but one wise man in a company, and all are wise, so 
rapid is the contagion. 

Great men are thus a collyrium to clear our eyes from 
egotism, and enable us to see other people and their works. 
But there are vices and follies incident to whole populations 
and ages. Men resemble their contemporaries, even more 
than their progenitors. It is observed in old couples, or 
in persons who have been housemates for a course of years, 
that they grow like; and if they should live long enough, 
we should not be able to know them apart. Nature abhors 
these complaisances, which threaten to melt the world into 
a lump, and hastens to break up such maudlin agglutina- 
tions. The Hke assimilation goes on between men of one 
town, of one sect, of one political party; and the ideas of 
the time are in the air, and infect all who breathe it. 



82 American Essays 

Viewed from any high point, this city of New York, yonder 
city of London, the western civiHzation, would seem a 
bundle of insanities. We keep each other in countenance, 
and exasperate by emulation the frenzy of the time. The 
shield against the stingings of conscience is the universal 
practice, or our contemporaries. Again : it is very easy 
to be as wise and good as your companions. We learn of 
our contemporaries what they know, without effort, and 
almost through the pores of the skin. We catch it by 
sympathy, or as a wife arrives at the intellectual and moral 
elevations of her husband. But we stop where they stop. 
Very hardly can we take another step. The great, or such 
as hold of nature, and transcend fashions, by their fidelity 
to universal ideas, are saviors from these federal errors, 
and defend us from our contemporaries. They are the 
exceptions which we want, where all grows alike. A 
foreign greatness is the antidote for cabalism. 

Thus we feed on genius, and refresh ourselves from too 
much conversation with our mates, and exult in the depth 
of nature in that direction in which he leads us. What 
indemnification is one great man for populations of pygmies ! 
Every mother wishes one son a genius, though all the rest 
should be mediocre. But a new danger appears in the ex- 
cess of influence of the great man. His attractions warp 
us from our place. We have become underlings and in- 
tellectual suicides. Ah! yonder in the horizon is our help: 
other great men, new qualities, counterweights and checks 
on each other. We cloy of the honey of each peculiar 
greatness. Every hero becomes a bore at last. Perhaps 
Voltaire was not bad-hearted, yet he said of the good 
Jesus, even, " I pray you, let me never hear that man's 
name again." They cry up the virtues of George Washing- 
ton — " Damn George Washington ! " is the poor Jacobin's 
whole speech and confutation. But it is human nature's 



Uses of Great Men 83 

indispensable defense. The centripetence augments the 
centrifugence. We balance one man with his opposite, 
and the health of the State depends on the see-saw. 

There is, however, a speedy limit to the use of heroes. 
Every genius is defended from approach by quantities of 
unavailableness. They are very attractive, and seem at a 
distance our own; but we are hindered on all sides from 
approach. The more we are drawn, the more we are re- 
pelled. There is something not solid in the good that is 
done for us. The best discovery the discoverer makes for 
himself. It has something unreal for his companion, until 
he too has substantiated it. It seems as if the Deity dressed 
each soul which he sends into nature in certain virtues and 
powers not communicable to other men, and, sending it to 
perform one more turn through the circle of beings, wrote, 
" Not transferable," and '' Good for this trip only/' on 
these garments of the soul. There is somewhat deceptive 
about the intercourse of minds. The boundaries are in- 
visible, but they are never crossed. There is such good 
will to impart, and such good will to receive, that each 
threatens to become the other; but the law of individuality 
collects its secret strength: you are you, and I am I, and 
so we remain. 

For Nature wishes everything to remain itself; and 
whilst every individual strives to grow and exclude, and to 
exclude and grow, to the extremities of the universe, and 
to impose the law of its being on every other creature. 
Nature steadily aims to protect each against every other. 
Each is self-defended. Nothing is more marked than the 
power by which individuals are guarded from individuals, 
in a world where every benefactor becomes so easily a 
malefactor, only by continuation of his activity into places 
where it is not due ; where children seem so much at the 
mercy of their foolish parents, and where almost all men 



84 American Essays 

are too social and interfering. We rightly speak of the 
guardian angels of children. How superior in their security 
from infusions of evil persons, from vulgarity and second 
thought ! They shed their own abundant beauty on the 
objects they behold. Therefore, they are not at the mercy 
of such poor educators as we adults. If we huff and chide 
them, they soon come not to mind it, and get a self-reliance; 
and if we indulge them to folly, they learn the limitation 
elsewhere. 

We need not fear excessive influence. A more generous 
trust is permitted. Serve the great. Stick at no humilia- 
tion. Grudge no office thou canst render. Be the limb 
of their body, the breath of their mouth. Compromise thy 
egotism. Who cares for that, so thou gain aught wider 
and nobler? Never mind the taunt of Boswellism : the 
devotion may easily be greater than the wretched pride 
which is guarding its own skirts. Be another — not thy- 
self, but a Platonist; not a soul, but a Christian; not a 
naturalist, but a Cartesian ; not a poet, but a Shaksperian. 
In vain; the wheels of tendency will not stop, nor will all 
the forces of inertia, fear, or of love itself, hold thee there. 
On, and forever onward ! The microscope observes a 
monad or wheel-insect among the infusories circulating in 
water. Presently a dot appears on the animal, which en- 
larges to a slit, and it becomes two perfect animals. The 
ever-proceeding detachment appears not less in all thought, 
and in society. Children think they cannot live without 
their parents. But long before they are aware of it, the 
black dot has appeared, and the detachment taken place. 
Any accident will now reveal to them their independence. 

But great men — the word is injurious. Is there caste? 
Is there fate? What becomes of the promise to virtue? 
The thoughtful youth laments the superfoetation of nature. 
'' Generous and handsome," he says, " is your hero ; but look 



Uses of Great Men 85 

at yonder poor Paddy, whose country is his wheelbarrow ; 
look at his whole nation of Paddies." Why are the masses, 
from the dawn of history down, food for knives and pow- 
der? The idea dignifies a few leaders, who have sentiment, 
opinion, love, self-devotion ; and they make war and death 
sacred; but what for the wretches whom they hire and kill? 
The cheapness of man is every day's tragedy. It is as real 
a loss that others should be low as that we should be low; 
for we must have society. 

Is it a reply to these suggestions, to say society is a 
Pestalozzian school ; all are teachers and pupils in turn. 
We are equally served by receiving and by imparting. 
Men who know the same things are not long the best com- 
pany for each other. But bring to each an intelligent per- 
son of another experience, and it is as if you let off water 
from a lake, by cutting a lower basin. It seems a me- 
chanical advantage, and great benefit it is to each speaker, 
as he can now paint out his thought to himself. We pass 
very fast, in our personal moods, from dignity to depend- 
ence. And if any appear never to assume the chair, but 
always to stand and serve, it is because we do not see the 
company in a sufiiciently long period for the whole rota- 
tion of parts to come about. As to what we call the masses 
and common men — there are no common men. All men 
are at last of a size; and true art is only possible on the 
conviction that every talent has its apotheosis somewhere. 
Fair play, and an open field, and freshest laurels to all who 
have won them ! But heaven reserves an equal scope for 
every creature. Each is uneasy until he has produced his 
private ray unto the concave sphere, and beheld his talent 
also in its last nobility and exaltation. 

The heroes of the hour are relatively great — of a faster 
growth; or they are such, in whom, at the moment of suc- 
cess, a quality is ripe which is then in request. Other days 



86 American Essays 

will demand other qualities. Some rays escape the com- 
mon observer, and want a finely adapted eye. Ask the 
great man if there be none greater. His companions are ; 
and not the less great, but the more, that society cannot 
see them. Nature never sends a great man into the planet 
without confiding the secret to another soul. 

One gracious fact emerges from these studies — that there 
is true ascension in our love. The reputations of the nine- 
teenth century will one day be quoted to prove its bar- 
barism. The genius of humanity is the real subject whose 
biography is written in our annals. We must infer much, 
and supply many chasms in the record. The history of the 
universe is symptomatic, and life is mnemonical. No 
man, in all the procession of famous men, is reason or 
illumination, or that essence we were looking for, but is 
an exhibition, in some quarter, of new possibilities. Could 
we one day complete the immense figure which these fla- 
grant points compose ! The study of many individuals leads 
us to an elemental region wherein the individual is lost, or 
wherein all touch by their summits. Thought and feeling, 
that break out there, cannot be impounded by any fence of 
personality. This is the key to the power of the greatest 
men — their spirit diffuses itself. A new quality of mind 
travels by night and by day, in concentric circles from its 
origin, and publishes itself by unknown methods ; the union 
of all minds appears intimate; what gets admission to one 
cannot be kept out of any other ; the smallest acquisition of 
truth or of energy, in any quarter, is so much good to the 
commonwealth of souls. If the disparities of talent and posi- 
tion vanish when the individuals are seen in the duration 
which is necessary to complete the career of each, even more 
swiftly the seeming injustice disappears when we ascend 
to the central identity of all the individuals, and know that 
they are made of the substance which ordaineth and doeth. 



Uses of Great Men 87 

The genius of humanity is the right point of view of 
history. The quaUties abide; the men who exhibit them 
have now more, now less, and pass away ; the quaUties 
remain on another brow. No experience is more famihar. 
Once you saw phoenixes : they are gone ; the world is not 
therefore disenchanted. The vessels on which you read 
sacred emblems turn but to be common pottery; but the 
sense of the pictures is sacred, and you may still read them 
transferred to the walls of the world. For a time our 
teachers serve us personally, as meters or milestones of 
progress. Once they were angels of knowledge, and their 
figures touched the sky. Then we drew near, saw their 
means, culture, and limits ; and they yielded their place to 
other geniuses. Happy, if a few names remain so high 
that we have not been able to read them nearer, and age 
and comparison have not robbed them of a ray. But, at 
last, we shall cease to look in men for completeness, and 
shall content ourselves with their social and delegated 
quality. All that respects the individual is temporary and 
prospective, like the individual himself, who is ascending 
out of his limits into a catholic existence. We have never 
come at the true and best benefit of any genius, so long as 
we believe him an original force. In the moment when he 
ceases to help us as a cause, he begins to help us more as an 
effect. Then he appears as an exponent of a vaster mind 
and will. The opaque self becomes transparent with the 
light of the First Cause. 

Yet, within the limits of human education and agency, 
we may say great men exist that there may be greater men. 
The destiny of organized nature is amelioration, and who 
can tell its limits? It is for man to tame the chaos; on 
every side, whilst he lives, to scatter the seeds of science 
and of song, that climate, corn, animals, men, may be milder, 
and the germs of love and benefit may be multiplied. 



BUDS AND BIRD-VOICES 

Nathaniel Hawthorne 

Balmy Spring — weeks later than we expected, and 
months later than we longed for her — comes at last to 
revive the moss on the roof and walls of our old mansion. 
She peeps brightly into my study window, inviting me to 
throw it open and create a summer atmosphere by the 
intermixture of her genial breath with the black and cheer- 
less comfort of the stove. As the casement ascends, forth 
into infinite space fly the innumerable forms of thought 
or fancy that have kept me company in the retirement of 
this little chamber during the sluggish lapse of wintry 
weather — visions gay, grotesque and sad, pictures of real 
life tinted with nature's homely gray and russet, scenes in 
dreamland bedizened with rainbow-hues which faded be- 
fore they were well laid on. All these may vanish now, 
and leave me to mold a fresh existence out of sunshine. 
Brooding Meditation may flap her dusky wings and take her 
owl-like flight, blinking amid the cheerfulness of noontide. 
Such companions befit the season of frosted window-panes 
and crackling fires, when the blast howls through the 
black-ash trees of our avenue, and the drifting snow- 
storm chokes up the wood paths and fills the highway 
from stone wall to stone wall. In the spring and sum- 
mer time all somber thoughts should follow the winter 
northward with the somber and thoughtful crows. The. 
old paradisiacal economy of life is again in force: we 
live, not to think nor to labor, but for the simple end of 

88 



Buds and Bird- Voices 89 

being happy; nothing for the present hour is worthy, of 
man's infinite capacity save to imbibe the warm smile of 
heaven and sympathize with the reviving earth. 

The present Spring comes onward with fleeter foot- 
steps because Winter hngered so unconscionably long that 
with her best diligence she can hardly retrieve half the al- 
lotted period of her reign. It is but a fortnight since I 
stood on the brink of our swollen river and beheld the 
accumulated ice of four frozen months go down the stream. 
Except in streaks here and there upon the hillsides, the 
whole visible universe was then covered with deep snow 
the nethermost layer of which had been deposited by an 
early December storm. It was a sight to make the be- 
holder torpid, in the impossibility of imagining how this 
vast white napkin was to be removed from the face of the 
corpse-like world in less time than had been required to 
spread it there. But who can estimate the power of gentle 
influences, whether amid material desolation or the moral 
winter of man's heart? There have been no tempestuous 
rains — even no sultry days — but a constant breath of south- 
ern winds, with now a day of kindly sunshine, and now a 
no less kindly mist, or a soft descent of showers, in which 
a smile and a blessing seemed to have been steeped. The 
snow has vanished as if by magic; whatever heaps may 
be hidden in the woods and deep gorges of the hills, only 
two solitary specks remain in the landscape, and those I 
shall almost regret to miss when to-morrow I look for 
them in vain. Never before, methinks, has spring pressed 
so closely on the footsteps of retreating winter. Along the 
roadside the green blades of grass have sprouted on the 
very edge of the snowdrifts. The pastures and mowing 
fields have not yet assumed a general aspect of verdure, 
but neither have they the cheerless brown tint which they 
wear in later autumn, when vegetation has entirely ceased; 



90 American Essays 

there is now a faint shadow of life, gradually brightening 
into the warm reality. Some tracts in a happy exposure — 
as, for instance, yonder southwestern slope of an orchard, 
in front of that old red farmhouse beyond the river — such 
patches of land already wear a beautiful and tender green 
to which no future luxuriance can add a charm. It looks 
unreal — a prophecy, a hope, a transitory effect of some 
peculiar light, which will vanish with the slightest motion 
of the eye. But beauty is never a delusion; not these 
verdant tracts but the dark and barren landscape all around 
them is a shadow and a dream. Each moment wins some 
portion of the earth from death to life; a sudden gleam 
of verdure brightens along the sunny slope of a bank which 
an instant ago was brown and bare. You look again, and, 
behold an apparition of green grass ! 

The trees in our orchard and elsewhere are as yet naked, 
but already appear full of life- and vegetable blood. It 
seems as if by one magic touch they might instantaneously 
burst into full foliage, and that the wind which now sighs 
through their naked branches might make sudden music 
amid innumerable leaves. The moss-grown willow tree 
which for forty years past has overshadowed these western 
windows will be among the first to put on its green attire. 
There are some objections to the willow: it is not a dry 
and cleanly tree, and impresses the beholder with an asso- 
ciation of sliminess. No trees, I think, are perfectly agree- 
able as companions unless they have glossy leaves, dry bark, 
and a firm and hard texture of trunk and branches. But 
the willow is almost the earliest to gladden us with the 
promise and reality of beauty in its graceful and delicate 
foliage, and the last to scatter its yellow, yet scarcely- 
withered, leaves upon the ground. All through the win- 
ter, too, its yellow twigs give it a sunny aspect which is 
not without a cheering influence even in the grayest and 



Buds and Bird- Voices 91 

gloomiest day. Beneath a clouded sky it faithfully re- 
members the sunshine. Our old house would lose a charm 
were the willow to be cut down, with its golden crown over 
the snow-covered roof, and its heap of summer verdure. 

The lilac shrubs under my study windows are likewise 
almost in leaf ; in two or three days more I may put forth 
my hand and pluck the topmost bough in its freshest green. 
These lilacs are very aged, and have lost the luxuriant 
foliage of their prime. The heart or the judgment or the 
moral sense or the taste is dissatisfied with their present 
aspect. Old age is not venerable when it embodies itself 
in lilacs, rose-bushes, or any other ornamental shrubs; it 
seems as if such plants, as they grow only for beauty, 
ought to flourish only in immortal youth — or, at least, to 
die before their sad decrepitude. Trees of beauty are trees 
of paradise, and therefore not subject to decay by their 
original nature, though they have lost that precious birth- 
right by being transplanted to an earthly soil. There is a 
kind of ludicrous unfitness in the idea of a time-stricken 
and grandfatherly lilac-bush. The analogy holds good in 
human life. Persons who can only be graceful and orna- 
mental — who can give the world nothing but flowers — 
should die young, and never be seen with gray hair and 
wrinkles, any more than the flower-shrubs with mossy bark 
and blighted foliage, like the lilacs under my window. Not 
that beauty is worthy of less than immortality. No; the 
beautiful should live forever, and thence, perhaps, the sense 
of impropriety when we see it triumphed over by time. 
Apple trees, on the other hand, grow old without reproach. 
Let them live as long as they may, and contort themselves 
into whatever perversity of shape they please, and deck 
their withered limbs with a springtime gaudiness of pink- 
blossoms, still they are respectable, even if they afford us 
only an apple or two in a season. Those few apples — or. 



g2 American Essays 

at all events, the remembrance of apples in bygone years — 
are the atonement which utilitarianism inexorably demands 
for the privilege of lengthened life. Human flower shrubs, 
if they will grow old on earth, should, besides their lovely 
blossoms, bear sorhe kind of fruit that will satisfy earthly ap- 
petites, else neither man nor the decorum of nature will 
deem it fit that the moss should gather on them. 

One of the first things that strikes the attention when the 
white sheet of winter is withdrawn is the neglect and disar- 
ray that lay hidden beneath it. Nature is not cleanly, 
according to our prejudices. The beauty of preceding 
years, now transformed to brown and blighted deformity, 
obstructs the brightening loveliness of the present hour. 
Our avenue is strewn with the whole crop of autumn's 
withered leaves. There are quantities of decayed branches 
which one tempest after another has flung down, black and 
rotten, and one or two with the ruin of a bird's nest cling- 
ing to them. In the garden are the dried bean-vines, the 
brown stalks of the asparagus-bed, and melancholy old 
cabbages which were frozen info the soil before their un- 
thrifty cultivator could find time to gather them. How 
invariable throughout all the forms of life do we find these 
intermingled memorials of death ! On the soil of thought 
and in the garden of the heart, as well as in the sensual 
world, lie withered leaves — the ideas and feelings that we 
have done with. There is no wind strong enough to sweep 
them away; infinite space will not garner them from our 
sight. What mean they? Why may we not be permitted 
to live and enjoy as if this were the first life and our own 
the primal enjoyment, instead of treading always on these 
dry bones and mouldering relics from the aged accumula- 
tion of which springs all that now appears so young and 
new ? Sweet must have been the spring-time of Eden, when 
no earlier year had strewn its decay upon the virgin turf. 



Buds and Bird- Voices 93 

and no former experience had ripened into summer and 
faded into autumn in the hearts of its inhabitants ! That 
was a world worth living in. — Oh, thou murmurer, it is out 
of the very wantonness of such a life that thou feignest 
these idle lamentations. There is no decay. Each human 
soul is the first created inhabitant of its own Eden. — We 
dwell in an old moss-covered mansion and tread in the 
worn footprints of the past, and have a gray clergyman's 
ghost for our daily and nightly inmate, yet all these out- 
ward circumstances are made less than visionary by the 
renewing power of the spirit. Should the spirit ever lose 
this power — should the withered leaves and the rotten 
branches and the moss-covered house and the ghost of the 
gray past ever become its realities, and the verdure and 
the freshness merely its faint dream — then let it pray to be 
released from earth. It will need the air of heaven to 
revive its pristine energies. 

What an unlooked for flight was this from our shadowy 
avenue of black-ash and balm-of-gilead trees into the in- 
finite ! Now we have our feet again upon the turf. No- 
where does the grass spring up so industriously as in this 
homely yard, along the base of the stone wall and in the 
sheltered nooks of the buildings, and especially around the 
southern door-step — a locality which seems particularly 
favorable to its growth, for it is already tall enough to 
bend over and wave in the wind. I observe that several 
weeds — and, most frequently, a plant that stains the fingers 
with its yellow juice — have survived and retained their 
freshness and sap throughout the winter. One knows not 
how they have deserved such an exception from the com- 
mon lot of their race. They are now the patriarchs of the 
departed year, and may preach mortality to the present 
generation of flowers and weeds. 

Among the delights of spring, how is it possible to forget 



94 American Essays 

the birds ? Even the crows were welcome, as the sable har- 
bingers of a brighter and livelier race. They visited us be- 
fore the snow was off, but seem mostly to have betaken 
themselves to remote depths of the woods, which they haunt 
all summer long. Many a time shall I disturb them there, 
and feel as if I had intruded among a company of silent 
worshipers as they sit in Sabbath stillness among the tree- 
tops. Their voices, when they speak, are in admirable ac- 
cordance with the tranquil solitude of a summer afternoon, 
and, resounding so far above the head, their loud clamor 
increases the religious quiet of the scene instead of breaking 
it. A crow, however, has no real pretensions to religion, 
in spite of his gravity of mien and black attire; he is cer- 
tainly a thief, and probably an infidel. The gulls are far 
more respectable, in a moral point of view. These denizens 
of sea-beaten rocks and haunters of the lonely beach come 
up our inland river at this season, and soar high overhead, 
flapping their broad wings in the upper sunshine. They are 
among the most picturesque of birds, because they so float 
and rest upon the air as to become almost stationary parts 
of the landscape. The imagination has time to grow ac- 
quainted with them ; they have not flitted away in a moment. 
You go up among the clouds and greet these lofty-flighted 
gulls, and repose confidently with them upon the sustaining 
atmosphere. Ducks have their haunts along the solitary 
places of the river, and alight in flocks upon the broad 
bosom of the overflowed meadows. Their flight is too rapid 
and determined for the eye to catch enjoyment from it, 
although it never fails to stir up the heart with the sports- 
man's ineradicable instinct. They have now gone farther 
northward, but will visit us again in autumn. 

The smaller birds — the little songsters of the woods, and 
those that haunt man's dwellings and claim human friend- 
ship by building their nests under the sheltering eaves or 



Buds and Bird- Voices 95 

among the orchard trees — these require a touch more deli- 
cate and a gentler heart than mine to do them justice. 
Their outburst of melody is like a brook let loose from 
wintry chains. We need not deem it a too high and solemn 
word to call it a hymn of praise to the Creator, since Nature, 
who pictures the reviving year in so many sights of beauty, 
has expressed the sentiment of renewed life in no other 
sound save the notes of these blessed birds. Their music, 
however, just now seems to be incidental, and not the result 
of a set purpose. They are discussing the economy of life 
and love and the site and architecture of their summer 
residences, and have no time to sit on a twig and pour 
forth solemn hymns or overtures, operas, symphonies and 
waltzes. Anxious questions are asked, grave subjects are 
settled in quick and animated debate, and only by occasional 
accident, as from pure ecstasy, does a rich warble roll its 
tiny waves of golden sound through the atmosphere. Their 
little bodies are as busy as their voices ; they are in a con- 
stant flutter and restlessness. Even when two or three 
retreat to a tree-top to hold council, they wag their tails and 
heads all the time with the irrepressible activity of their 
nature, which perhaps renders their brief span of life in 
reality as long as the patriarchal age of sluggish man. The 
blackbirds — three species of which consort together — are 
the noisiest of all our feathered citizens. Great companies 
of them — more than the famous " four-and-twenty " whom 
Mother Goose has immortalized — congregate in contiguous 
tree-tops and vociferate with all the clamor and confusion 
of a turbulent political meeting. Politics, certainly, must 
be the occasion of such tumultuous debates, but still, unlike 
all other politicians, they instill melody into their individual 
utterances and produce harmony as a general effect. Of 
all bird-voices, none are more sweet and cheerful to my ear 
than those of swallows in the dim, sun-streaked interior of 



96 American Essays 

a lofty barn; they address the heart with even a closer 
sympathy than Robin Redbreast. But, indeed, all these 
winged people that dwell in the vicinity of homesteads seem 
to partake of human nature and possess the germ, if not 
the development, of immortal souls. We hear them saying 
their melodious prayers at morning's blush and eventide. 
A little while ago, in the deep of night, there came the 
lively thrill of a bird's note from a neighboring tree — a real 
song such as greets the purple dawn or mingles with the 
yellow sunshine. What could the little bird mean by pour- 
ing it forth at midnight? Probably the music gushed out 
of the midst of a dream in which he fancied himself in 
paradise with his mate, but suddenly awoke on a cold, leaf- 
less bough with a New England mist penetrating through 
his feathers. That was a sad exchange of imagination for 
reality. 

Insects are among the earliest births of spring. Multi- 
tudes, of I know not what species, appeared long ago on the 
surface of the snow. Clouds of them almost too minute 
for sight hover in a beam of sunshine, and vanish as if 
annihilated when they pass into the shade. A mosquito 
has already been heard to sound the small horror of his 
bugle-horn. Wasps infest the sunny windows of the house. 
A- bee entered one of the chambers with a prophecy of 
flowers. Rare butterflies came before the snow was off, 
flaunting in the chill breeze, and looking forlorn and all 
astray in spite of the magnificence of their dark velvet 
cloaks with golden borders. 

The fields and wood-paths have as yet few charms to 
entice the wanderer. In a walk the other day I found no 
violets nor anemones, nor anything in the likeness of a 
flower. It was worth while, however, to ascend our op- 
posite hill for the sake of gaining a general idea of the 
advance of spring, which I had hitherto been studying in its 



Buds and Bird- Voices 97 

minute developments. The river lay round me in a semi- 
circle, overflowing all the meadows which give it its Indian 
name, and offering a noble breadth to sparkle in the sun- 
beams. Along the hither shore a row of trees stood up to 
their knees in water, and afar off, on the surface of the 
stream, tufts of bushes thrust up their heads, as it were, to 
breathe. The most striking objects were great solitary 
trees here and there with a mile-wide waste of water all 
around them. The curtailment of the trunk by its immer- 
sion in the river quite destroys the fair proportions of the 
tree, and thus makes us sensible of a regularity and pro- 
priety in the usual forms of nature. The flood of the 
present season, though it never amounts to a freshet on our 
quiet stream, has encroached farther upon the land than any 
previous one for at least a score of years. It has overflowed 
stone fences, and even rendered a portion of the highway 
navigable for boats. The waters, however, are now gradu- 
ally subsiding; islands become annexed to the mainland, 
and other islands emerge like new creations from the watery 
waste. The scene supplies an admirable image of the re- 
ceding of the Nile — except that there is no deposit of black 
slime — or of Noah's flood, only that there is a freshness 
and novelty in these recovered portions of the continent 
which give the impression of a world just made rather than 
of one so polluted that a deluge had been requisite to purify 
it. These upspringing islands are the greenest spots in the 
landscape ; the first gleam of sunlight suffices to cover them 
with verdure. 

Thank Providence for spring! The earth — and man 
himself, by sympathy with his birthplace — would be far 
other than we find them if life toiled wearily onward with- 
out this periodical infusion of the primal spirit. Will the 
world ever be so decayed that spring may not renew its 
greenness? Can man be so dismally age-stricken that no 



98 American Essays 

faintest sunshine of his youth may revisit him once a year? 
It is impossible. The moss on our time-worn mansion 
brightens into beauty, the good old pastor who once dwelt 
here renewed his prime, regained his boyhood, in the genial 
breezes of his ninetieth spring. Alas for the worn and 
heavy soul if, whether in youth or age, it have outlived 
its privilege of springtime sprightliness ! From such a soul 
the world must hope no reformation of its evil — no sym- 
pathy with the lofty faith and gallant struggles of those 
who contend in its behalf. Summer works in the present 
and thinks not of the future ; autumn is a rich conservative ; 
winter has utterly lost its faith, and clings tremulously to 
the remembrance of what has been; but spring, with its 
outgushing life, is the true type of the movement. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION 
Edgar Allan Poe 

Charles Dickens, in a note now lying before me, allud- 
ing to an examination I once made of the mechanism of 
Barnaby Rudge, says — " By the way, are you aware that 
Godwin wrote his Caleb Williams backwards? He first 
involved his hero in a web of difficulties, forming the 
second volume, and then, for the first, cast about him for 
some mode of accounting for what had been done." 

I cannot think this the precise mode of procedure on the 
part of Godwin — and indeed what he himself acknowledges, 
is not altogether in accordance with Mr. Dickens' idea — 
but the author of Caleb Williams was. too good an artist 
not to perceive the advantage derivable from at least a 
somewhat similar process. Nothing is more clear than that 
every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its 
denouement before anything be attempted with the pen. It 
is only with the denouement constantly in view that we can 
give a plot its indispensable air of consequence, or causation, 
by making the incidents, and especially the tone at all points, 
tend to the development of the intention. 

There is a radical error, I think, in the usual mode of 
constructing a story. Either history affords a thesis — or 
one is suggested by an incident of the day — or, at best, the 
author sets himself to work in the combination of striking 
events to form merely the basis of his narrative — designing, 
generally, to fill in with description, dialogue, or autorial 
comment, whatever crevices of fact, or action, may, from 
page to page, render themselves apparent. 

99 



100 American Essays 

I prefer commencing with the consideration of an effect. 
Keeping originaHty always in view — for he is false to him- 
self who ventures to dispense with so obvious and so easily 
attainable a source of interest — I say to myself, in the first 
place, " Of the innumerable effects, or impressions, of which 
the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is 
susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, se- 
lect ? " Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly a vivid 
effect, I consider whether it can be best wrought by incident 
or tone — whether by ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, 
or the converse, or by peculiarity both of incident and tone 
— afterward looking about me (or rather within) for such 
combinations of event, or tone, as shall best aid me in the 
construction of the effect. 

I have often thought how interesting a magazine paper 
might be written by any author who would^ — that is to say, 
who could — detail, step by step, the processes by which any 
one of his compositions attained its ultimate point of com- 
pletion. Why such a paper has never been given to the 
world, I am much at a loss to say — but, perhaps, the autorial 
vanity has had more to do with the omission than any one 
other cause. Most writers — poets in especial — prefer hav- 
ing it understood that they compose by a species of fine 
frenzy — an ecstatic intuition — and would positively shudder 
at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes, at the 
elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought — at the true 
purposes seized only at the last moment — at the innumerable 
glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full 
view — at the fully matured fancies discarded in despair as 
unmanageable — at the cautious selections and rejections — 
at the painful erasures and interpolations — in a word, at 
the wheels and pinions — the tackle for scene-shifting — the 
step-ladders and demon-traps — the cock's feathers, the red 
paint and the black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out 



The Philosophy of Composition ioi 

of the hundred, constitute the properties of the literary 
histrio. 

I am aware, on the other hand, that the case is by no 
means common, in which an author is at all in condition 
to retrace the steps by which his conclusions have been at- 
tained. In general, suggestions, having arisen pell-mell, 
are pursued and forgotten in a similar manner. 

For my own part, I have neither sympathy with the re- 
pugnance alluded to, nor, at any time, the least difficulty 
in recalling to mind the progressive steps of any of my 
compositions ; and, since the interest of an analysis, or re- 
construction, such as I have considered a desideratum, is 
quite independent of any real or fancied interest in the 
thing analyzed, it will not be regarded as a breach of de- 
corum on my part to show the modus operandi by which 
some one of my own works was put together. I select 
'' The Raven," as the most generally known. It is my 
design to render it manifest that no one point in its com- 
position is referable either to accident or intuition — that 
the work proceeded, step by step, to its completion with 
the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical 
problem. 

Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem, per se, the cir- 
cumstance- — or say the necessity — which, in the first place, 
gave rise to the intention of composing a poem that should 
suit at once the popular and the critical taste. 

We commence, then, with this intention. 

The initial consideration was that of extent. If any 
literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, we must 
be content to dispense with the immensely important effect 
derivable from unity of impression — for, if two sittings be 
required, the affairs of the world interfere, and everything 
like totality is at once destroyed. But since, ceteris paribus, 
no poet can afford to dispense with anything that may ad- 



102 American Essays 

vance his design, it but remains to be seen whether there 
is, in extent, any advantage to counterbalance the loss of 
unity which attends it. Here I say no, at once. What we 
term a long poem is, in fact, merely a succession of* brief 
ones — that is to say, of brief poetical effects. It is needless 
to demonstrate that a poem is such, only inasmuch as it in- 
tensely excites, by elevating, the soul; and all intense ex- 
citements are, through a psychal necessity, brief. For this 
reason, at least one-half of the Paradise Lost is essen- 
tially prose — a succession of poetical excitements inter- 
spersed, inevitably, with corresponding depressions — the 
whole being deprived, through the extremeness of its length, 
of the vastly important artistic element, totality, or unity, of 
effect. 

It appears evident, then, that there is a distinct limit, as 
regards length, to all works of literary art — the limit of a 
single sitting — and that, although in certain classes of prose 
composition, such as Robinson Crusoe, (demanding no 
unity,) this limit may be advantageously overpassed, it can 
never properly be overpassed in a poem. Within this limit, 
the extent of a poem may be made to bear mathematical 
relation to its merit — in other words, to the excitement or 
elevation — again in other words, to the degree of the 
true poetical effect which it is capable of inducing; for it 
is clear that the brevity must be in direct ratio of the in- 
tensity of the intended effect : — this, with one proviso — that 
a certain degree of duration is absolutely requisite for the 
production of any effect at all. 

Holding in view these considerations, as well as that 
degree of excitement which I deemed not above the popular, 
while not below the critical, taste, I reached at once what 
I conceived the proper length for my intended poem — a 
length of about one hundred lines. It is, in fact, a hundred 
and eight. 



The Philosophy of Composition 103 

My next thought concerned the choice of an impression, 
or effect, to be conveyed : and here I may as well observe 
that, throughout the construction, I kept steadily in view 
the design of rendering the work universally appreciable. I 
should be carried too far out of my immediate topic were I 
to demonstrate a point upon which I have repeatedly in- 
sisted, and which, with the poetical, stands not in the slight- 
est need of demonstration — the point, I mean, that Beauty 
is the sole legitimate province of the poem. A few words, 
however, in elucidation of my real meaning, which some 
of my friends have evinced a disposition to misrepresent. 
That pleasure which is at once the most intense, the most 
elevating, and the most pure, is, I believe, found in the 
contemplation of the beautiful. When, indeed, men speak 
of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is sup- 
posed, but an effect — they refer, in short, just to that intense 
and pure elevation of soul — not of intellect, or of heart — 
upon which I have commented, and which is experienced in 
consequence of contemplating " the beautiful." Now I 
designate Beauty as the province of the poem, merely be- 
cause it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be 
made to spring from direct causes — that objects should be 
attained through means best adapted for their attainment — 
no one as yet having been weak enough to deny that the 
peculiar elevation alluded to is most readily attained in 
the poem. Now the object. Truth, or the satisfaction of the 
intellect, and the object Passion, or the excitement of the 
heart, are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, 
far more readily attainable in prose. Truth, in fact, de- 
mands a precision, and Passion, a homeliness (the truly pas- 
sionate will comprehend me) which are absolutely an- 
tagonistic to that Beauty which, I maintain, is the excite- 
ment, or pleasurable elevation, of the soul. It by no means 
follows from anything here said, that passion, or even truth, 



104 American Essays 

may not be introduced, and even profitably introduced, into 
a poem — for they may serve in elucidation, or aid the gen- 
eral effect, as do discords in music, by contrast — but the 
true artist will always contrive, first, to tone them into 
proper subservience to the predominant aim, and, secondly, 
to enveil them, as far as possible, in that Beauty which is 
the atmosphere and the essence of the poem. 

Regarding, then, Beauty as my province, my next ques- 
tion referred to the tone of its highest manifestation — and 
all experience has shown that this tone is one of sadness. 
Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, in- 
variably excites the sensitive soul to tears. Melancholy is 
thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones. 

The length, the province, and the tone, being thus deter- 
mined, I betook myself to ordinary induction, with the view 
of obtaining some artistic piquancy which might serve me 
as a key-note in the construction of the poem — some pivot 
upon which the whole structure might turn. In carefully 
thinking over all the usual artistic effects^or more properly 
points, in the theatrical sense — I did not fail to perceive 
immediately that no one had been so universally employed 
as that of the refrain. The universality of its employment 
sufficed to assure me of its intrinsic value, and spared me 
the necessity of submitting it to analysis. I considered it, 
however, with regard to its susceptibility of improvement, 
and soon saw it to be in a primitive condition. As com- 
monly used, the refrain, or burden, not only is limited to 
lyric verse, but depends for its impression upon the force 
of monotone — both in sound and thought. The pleasure is 
deduced solely from the sense of identity — of repetition. I 
resolved to diversify, and so vastly heighten, the effect, by 
adhering, in general, to the monotone of sound, while I 
continually varied that of thought: that is to say, I de- 
termined to produce continuously novel effects, by the 



The Philosophy of Composition 105 

variation of the application of the refrain — the refrain itself 
remaining-, for the most part, unvaried. 

These points being settled, I next bethought me of the 
nature of my refrain. Since its application was to be re- 
peatedly varied, it was clear that the refrain itself must be 
brief, for there would have been an insurmountable difficulty 
in frequent variations of application in any sentence of 
length. In proportion to the brevity of the sentence, would, 
of course, be the facility of the variation. This led me at 
once to a single word as the best refrain. 

The question now arose as to the character of the word. 
Having made up my mind to a refrain, the division of the 
poem into stanzas was, of course, a corollary": the refrain 
forming the close to each stanza. That such a close, to 
have force, must be sonorous and susceptible of protracted 
emphasis, admitted no doubt: and these considerations 
inevitably led me to the long o as the most sonorous 
vowel, in connection with r as the most producible conso- 
nant. 

The sound of the refrain being thus determined, it be- 
came necessary to select a word embodying this sound, and 
at the same time in the fullest possible keeping with that 
melancholy which I had predetermined as the tone of the 
poem. In such a search it would have been absolutely im- 
possible to overlook the word '' Nevermore." In fact, it 
was the very first which presented itself. 

The next desideratum was a pretext for the continuous 
use of the one word " nevermore." In observing the diffi- 
culty which I at once found in inventing a sufficiently 
plausible reason for its continuous repetition, I did not fail 
to perceive that this difficulty arose solely from the pre- 
assumption that the word was to be so continuously or 
monotonously spoken by a human being — I did not fail to 
perceive, in short, that the difficulty lay in the reconcilia- 



io6 American Essays 

tion of this monotony with the exercise of reason on the 
part of the creature repeating the word. Here, then, im- 
mediately arose the idea of a wow-reasoning creature capable 
of speech; and, very naturally, a parrot, in the first in- 
stance, suggested itself, but was superseded forthwith by a 
Raven, as equally capable of speech, and infinitely more in 
keeping with the intended tone. 

I had now gone so far as the conception of a Raven — 
the bird of ill omen — monotonously repeating the one word, 
" Nevermore," at the conclusion of each stanza, in a poem 
of melancholy tone, and in length about one hundred lines. 
Now, never losing sight of the object supremeness, or per- 
fection, at all points, I asked myself — " Of all melancholy 
topics, what, according to the universal understanding of 
mankind, is the most melancholy ? " Death — was the ob- 
vious reply. " And when," I said, '' is this most melan- 
choly of topics most poetical? " From what I have already 
explained at some length, the answer, here also, is obvious — 
" When it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the death, 
then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most 
poetical topic in the world — and equally is it beyond doubt 
that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a 
bereaved lover." 

I had now to combine the two ideas, of a lover lamenting 
his deceased mistress and a Raven continuously repeating 
the word " Nevermore " — I had to combine these, bearing 
in mind my design of varying, at every turn, the application 
of the word repeated ; but the only intelligible mode of such 
combination is that of imagining the Raven employing the 
word in answer to the queries of the lover. And here it was 
that I saw at once the opportunity afforded for the effect on 
which I had been depending — that is to say, the effect of 
the variation of application. I saw that I could make the 
first query propounded by the lover — the first query to 



The Philosophy of Composition 107 

which the Raven should reply " Nevermore " — that I could 
make this first query a commonplace one — the second less 
so — the third still less, and so on — until at length the lover, 
startled from his original nonchalance by the melancholy 
character of the word itself — by its frequent repetition — 
and by a consideration of the ominous reputation of the 
fowl that uttered it — is at length excited to superstition, 
and wildly propounds queries of a far different character — 
queries whose solution he has passionately at heart — pro- 
pounds them half in superstition and half in that species 
of despair which delights in self-torture — propounds them 
not altogether because he believes in the prophetic or 
demoniac character of the bird (which, reason assures him, 
is merely repeating a lesson learned by rote) but because 
he experiences a frenzied pleasure in so modeling his ques- 
tions as to receive from the expected " Nevermore " the 
most delicious because the most intolerable of sorrow. Per- 
ceiving the opportunity thus afforded me — or, more strictly, 
thus forced upon me in the progress of the construction — I 
first established in mind the climax, or concluding query — 
that to which " Nevermore " should be in the last place an 
answer — that in reply to which this word '* Nevermore " 
should involve the utmost conceivable amount of sorrow 
and despair. 

Here then the poem may be said to have its beginning 
— at the end, where all works of art should begin — for it 
was here, at this point of my preconsiderations, that I first 
put pen to paper in the composition of the stanza : 



Prophet,' said I, 'thing of evil! prophet still if bird or devil! 
By that heaven that bends above us — by that God v^e both adore, 
Tell this soul with sorroMf laden, if within the distant Aidenn, 
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore — 
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.' 
Quoth the raven ' Nevermore.' " 



io8 American Essays 

I composed this stanza, at this point, first that, by estab- 
lishing the cUmax, I might the better vary and graduate, as 
regards seriousness and importance, the preceding queries 
of the lover — and, secondly, that I might definitely settle 
the rhythm, the meter, and the length and general ar- 
rangement of the stanza — as well as graduate the stan- 
zas which were to precede, so that none of them might 
surpass this in rhythmical effect. Had I been able, in 
the subsequent composition, to construct more vigorous 
stanzas, I should, without scruple, have purposely en- 
feebled them, so as not to interfere with the climacteric 
effect. 

And here I may as well say a few words of the versifi- 
cation. My first object (as usual) was originality. The 
extent to which this has been neglected, in versification, is 
one of the most unaccountable things in the world. Ad- 
mitting that there is little possibility of variety in mere 
rhythm, it is still clear that the possible varieties of meter 
and stanza are absolutely infinite — and yet, for centuries, no 
man, in verse, has ever done, or ever seemed to think of 
doing, an original thing. The fact is, originality (unless in 
minds of very unusual force) is by no means a matter, as 
some suppose, of impulse or intuition. In general, to be 
found, it must be elaborately sought, and although a posi- 
tive merit of the highest class, demands in its attainment 
less of invention than negation. 

Of course, I pretend to no originality in either the rhythm 
or meter of the " Raven." The former is trochaic — the 
latter is octameter acatalectic, alternating with heptameter 
catalectic repeated in the refrain of the fifth verse, and 
terminating with tetrameter catalectic. Less pedantically — 
the feet employed throughout (trochees) consist of a long 
syllable followed by a short: the first line of the stanza 
consists of eight of these feet — the second of seven and a 



The Philosophy of Composition 109 

half (in effect two-thirds) — the third of eight — the fourth 
of seven and a half — the fifth the same — the sixth three 
and a half. Now, each of these lines, taken individually, 
has been employed before, and what originality the 
" Raven " has, is in their combination into stanza; nothing 
even remotely approaching this combination has ever been 
attempted. The effect of this originality of combination is 
aided by other unusual, and some altogether novel effects, 
arising from an extension of the application of the prin- 
ciples of rhyme and alliteration. 

The next point to be considered was the mode of bring- 
ing together the lover and the Raven — and the first branch 
of this consideration was the locale. For this the most 
natural suggestion might seem to be a forest, or the fields 
— but it has always appeared to me that a close circumscrip- 
tion of space is absolutely necessary to the effect of insu- 
lated incident : — it has the force of a frame to a picture. It 
has an indisputable moral power in keeping concentrated 
the attention, and, of course, must not be confounded with 
mere unity of place. 

I determined, then, to place the lover in his chamber — 
in a chamber rendered sacred to him by memories of her 
who had frequented it. The room is represented as richly 
furnished — this in mere pursuance of the ideas I have al- 
ready explained on the subject of Beauty, as the sole true 
poetical thesis. 

The locale being thus determined, I had now to introduce 
the bird — and the thought of introducing him through the 
v/indow, was inevitable. The idea of making the lover sup- 
pose, in the first instance, that the flapping of the wings of 
the bird against the shutter, is a " tapping " at the door, 
originated in a wish to increase, by prolonging, the reader's 
curiosity, and in a desire to admit the incidental effect aris- 
ing from the lover's throwing open the door, finding all 



no American Essays 

dark, and thence adopting the half -fancy that it was the 
spirit of his mistress that knocked. 

I made the night tempestuous, first, to account for the 
Raven's seeking admission, and secondly, for the effect of 
contrast with the (physical) serenity within the chamber. 

I made the bird alight on the bust of Pallas, also for the 
effect of contrast between the marble and the plumage — it 
being understood that the bust was absolutely suggested by 
the bird — the bust of Pallas being chosen, first, as most in 
keeping with the scholarship of the lover, and, secondly, for 
the sonorousness of the word, Pallas, itself. 

About the middle of the poem, also, I have availed myself 
of the force of contrast, with a view of deepening the ulti- 
mate impression. For example, an air of the fantastic — 
approaching as nearly to the ludicrous as was admissible — 
is given to the Raven's entrance. He comes in '' with many 
a flirt and flutter." 

" Not the least obeisance made he — not a moment stopped or stayed 
he, 
But with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door," 

In the two stanzas which follow, the design is more 
obviously carried out: — 

" Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling 
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, 
* Though thy crest he shorn and shaven thou,' I said, ' art sur6 no 

craven, 
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the nightly 

shore — 
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore ! ' 
Quoth the Raven ' Nevermore.' 

" Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, 
Though its answer little meaning — little relevancy bore ; 
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being 
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door — 
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, 
With such name as ' Nevermore.' " 



The Philosophy of Composition hi 

The effect of the denouement being thus provided for, I 
immediately drop the fantastic for a tone of the most pro- 
found seriousness : — this tone commencing in the stanza 
directly following the one last quoted, with the line, 

" But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only," etc. 

From this epoch the lover no longer jests — no longer 
sees anything even of the fantastic in the Raven's demeanor. 
He speaks of him as a '' grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and 
ominous bird of yore," and feels the '' fiery eyes " burning 
into his '' bosom's core." This revolution of thought, or 
fancy, on the lover's part, is intended to induce a similar 
one on the part of the reader — to bring the mind into a 
proper frame for the denouement — which is now brought 
about as rapidly and as directly as possible. 

With the denouement proper — with the Raven's reply, 
" Nevermore," to the lover's final demand if he shall meet 
his mistress in another world — the poem, in its obvious 
phase, that of a simple narrative, may be said to have its 
completion. So far, everything is within the limits of the 
accountable — of the real. A raven, having learned by rote 
the single word " Nevermore," and having escaped from 
the custody of its owner, is driven at midnight, through the 
violence of a storm, to seek admission at a window from 
which a light still gleams — the chamber-window of a stu- 
dent, occupied half in poring over a volume, half in 
dreaming of a beloved mistress deceased. The casement 
being thrown open at the fluttering of the bird's wings, the 
bird itself perches on the most convenient seat out of the 
immediate reach of the student, who, amused by the incident 
and the oddity of the visitor's demeanor, demands of it, in 
jest and without looking for a reply, its name. The raven 
addressed, answers with its customary word, " Never- 
more " — a word which finds immediate echo in the melan- 



112 American Essays 

choly heart of the student, who, giving utterance aloud to 
certain thoughts suggested by the occasion, is again startled 
by the fowl's repetition of " Nevermore." The student 
now guesses the state of the case, but is impelled, as I 
have before explained, by the human thirst for self-torture, 
and in part by superstition, to propound such queries to 
the bird as will bring him, the lover, the most of the luxury 
of sorrow, through the anticipated answer " Nevermore." 
With the indulgence, to the utmost extreme, of this self- 
torture, the narration, in what I have termed its first or 
obvious phase, has a natural termination, and so far there 
has been no overstepping of the limits of the real. 

But in subjects so handled, however skillfully, or with 
however vivid an array of incident, there is always a cer- 
tain hardness or nakedness, which repels the artistical eye. 
Two things are invariably required — first, some amount of 
complexity, or more properly, adaptation ; and, secondly, 
some amount of suggestiveness — some vyidercurrent, how- 
ever indefinite, of meaning. It is this latter, in especial, 
which imparts to a work of art so much of that richness 
(to borrow from colloquy a forcible term) which we are 
too fond of confounding with the ideal. It is the excess 
of the suggested meaning — it is the rendering this the upper 
instead of the under current of the theme — which turns into 
prose (and that of the very flattest kind) the so-called 
poetry of the so-called transcendentalists. 

Holding these opinions, I added the two concluding 
stanzas of the poem — their suggestiveness being thus made 
to pervade all the narrative which has preceded them. The 
undercurrent of meaning is rendered first apparent in the 
lines — 

" ' Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off 
my door ! ' 

Quoth the Raven ' Nevermore ! ' " 



The Philosophy of Composition 113 

It will be observed that the words, " from out my heart," 
involve the first metaphorical expression in the poem. They, 
with the answer, " Nevermore," dispose the mind to seek a 
moral in all that has been previously narrated. The reader 
begins now to regard the Raven as emblematical — but it is 
not until the very last line of the very last stanza, that the 
intention of making him emblematical of Mournful and 
Never-ending Remembrance is permitted distinctly to be 
seen : 

" And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, 
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; 
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, 
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the 

floor ; 
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor 
Shall be lifted — nevermore." 



BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER 
Oliver Wendell Holmes 

This is the new version of the Panem et Circenses of 
the Roman populace. It is our ultimatum, as that was 
theirs. They must have something to eat, and the circus- 
shows to look at. We must have something to eat, and 
the papers to read. 

Everything else we can give up. If we are rich, we can 
lay down our carriages, stay away from Newport or Sara- 
toga, and adjourn the trip to Europe sine die. If we live in 
a small way, there are at least new dresses and bonnets and 
every-day luxuries which we can dispense with. If the 
young Zouave of the family looks smart in his new uni- 
form, its respectable head is content, though he himself 
grow seedy as a caraway-umbel late in the season. He will 
cheerfully calm the perturbed nap of his old beaver by pa- 
tient brushing in place of buying a new one, if only the 
Lieutenant's jaunty cap is what it should be. We all take 
a pride in sharing the epidemic economy of the time. Only 
bread and the newspaper we must have, whatever else we 
do without. 

How this war is simplifying our mode of being! We 
live on our emotions, as the sick man is said in the common 
speech to be nourished by his fever. Our ordinary mental 
food has become distasteful, and what would have been 
intellectual luxuries at other times, are now absolutely 
repulsive. 

All this change in our manner of existence implies that 

114 



Bread and the Newspaper" 115 

we have experienced some very profound impression, which 
will sooner or later betray itself in permanent effects on 
the minds and bodies of many among us. We cannot forget 
Corvisart's observation of the frequency with which dis- 
eases of the heart were noticed as the consequence of the 
terrible emotions produced by the scenes of the great French 
Revolution. Laennec tells the story of a convent, of which 
he was the medical director, where all the nuns were sub- 
jected to the severest penances and schooled in the most 
painful doctrines. They all became consumptive soon after 
their entrance, so that, in the course of his ten years' at- 
tendance, all the inmates died out two or three times, and 
were replaced by new ones. He does not hesitate to at- 
tribute the disease from which they suffered to those 
depressing moral influences to which they were subjected. 

So far we have noticed little more than disturbances of 
the nervous system as a consequence of the war excitement 
in non-combatants. Take the first trifling example which 
comes to our recollection. A sad disaster to the Federal 
army was told the other day in the presence of two gentle- 
men and a lady. Both the gentlemen complained of a sud- 
den feeling at the epigastrium, or, less learnedly, the pit of 
the stomach, changed color, and confessed to a slight tremor 
about. the knees. The lady had a " grand e revolution/' as 
French patients say, — went home, and kept her bed for the 
rest of the day. Perhaps the reader may smile at the men- 
tion of such trivial indispositions, but in more sensitive 
natures death itself follows in some cases from no more 
serious cause. An old gentleman fell senseless in fatal 
apoplexy, on hearing of Napoleon's return from Elba. One 
of our early friends, who recently died of the same com- 
plaint, was thought to have had his attack mainly in conse- 
quence of the excitements of the time. 

We all -know what the war fever is in our young men, — 



ii6 American Essays 

what a devouring passion it becomes in those whom it 
assails. Patriotism is the fire of it, no doubt, but this is fed 
with fuel of all sorts. The love of adventure, the contagion 
of example, the fear of losing the chance of participating in 
the great events of the time, the desire of personal distinc- 
tion, all help to produce those singular transformations 
which we often witness, turning the most peaceful of our 
youth into the most ardent of our soldiers. But something 
of the same fever in a different form reaches a good many 
non-combatants, who have no thought of losing a drop of 
precious blood belonging to themselves or their families. 
Some of the symptoms we shall mention are almost uni- 
versal; they are as plain in the people we meet everywhere 
as the marks of an influenza, when that is prevailing. 
, The first is a nervous restlessness of a very peculiar 
character. Men cannot think, or write, or attend to their 
ordinary business. They stroll up and down the streets, or 
saunter out upon the public places. We confessed to an 
illustrious author that we laid down the volume of his work 
which we were reading when the war broke out. It was 
as interesting as a romance, but the romance of the past 
grew pale before the red light of the terrible present. 
Meeting the same author not long afterwards, he confessed 
that he had laid down his pen at the same time that we 
had closed his book. He could not write about the sixteenth 
century any more than we could read about it, while the 
nineteenth was in the very agony and bloody sweat of its 
great sacrifice. 

Another most eminent scholar told us in all simplicity 
that he had fallen into such a state that he would read the 
same telegraphic dispatches over and over again in differ- 
ent papers, as if they were new, until he felt as if he were 
an idiot. Who did not do just the same thing, and does 
not often do it still, now that the first flush of the fever is 



Bread and the Newspaper 117 

over? Another person always goes through the side streets 
on his way for the noon extra, — he is so afraid somebody 
will meet him and tell the news he wishes to read, first on 
the bulletin-board, and then in the great capitals and leaded 
type of the newspaper. 

When any startling piece of war-news comes, it keeps 
repeating itself in our minds in spite of all we can do. 
The same trains of thought go tramping round in circle 
through the brain, like the supernumeraries that make up 
the grand army of a stage-show. Now, if a thought goes 
round through the brain a thousand times in a day, it will 
have worn as deep a track as one which has passed through 
it once a week for twenty years. This accounts for the 
ages we seem to have lived since the twelfth of April last, 
and, to state it more generally, for that ex post facto opera- 
tion of a great calamity, or any very powerful impression, 
which we once illustrated by the image of a stain spread- 
ing backwards from the leaf of life open before us through 
all those which we have already turned. 

Blessed are those who can sleep quietly in times like 
these ! Yet, not wholly blessed, either : for what is more 
painful than the awaking from peaceful unconsciousness to 
a sense that there is something wrong, — we cannot at first 
think what, — and then groping our way about through the 
twilight of our thoughts until we come full upon the misery, 
which, like some evil bird, seemed to have flown away, but 
which sits waiting for us on its perch by our pillow in the 
gray of the morning? 

The converse of this is perhaps still more painful. Many 
have the feeling in their waking hours that the trouble they 
are aching with is, after all, only a dream, — if they will 
rub their eyes briskly enough and shake themselves, they 
will awake out of it, and find all their supposed grief is 
unreal. This attempt to cajole ourselves out of an ugly fact 



ii8 American Essays 

always reminds us of those unhappy flies who have been 
indulging in the dangerous sweets of the paper prepared 
for their especial use. 

Watch one of them. He does not feel quite well, — at 
least, he suspects himself of indisposition. Nothing se- 
rious, — let us just rub our fore-feet together, as the enor- 
mous creature who provides for us rubs his hands, and all 
will be right. He rubs them with that peculiar twisting 
movement of his, and pauses for the effect. No ! all is not 
quite right yet. Ah! it is our head that is not set on just 
as it ought to be. Let us settle that where it should be, and 
then we shall certainly be in good trim again. So he pulls 
his head about as an old lady adjusts her cap, and passes 
his fore-paw over it like a kitten washing herself. — Poor 
fellow ! It is not a fancy, but a fact, that he has to deal 
with. If he could read the letters at the head of the sheet, 
he would see they were Fly-Paper. — So with us, when, in 
our waking misery, we try to think we dream ! Perhaps 
very young persons may not understand this ; as we grow 
older, our waking and dreaming life run more and more 
into each other. 

Another symptom of our excited condition is seen in the 
breaking up of old habits. The newspaper is as imperious 
as a Russian Ukase ; it will be had, and it will be read. To 
this all else must give place. If we must go out at un- 
usual hours to get it, we shall go, in spite of after-dinner 
nap or evening somnolence. If it finds us in company, it 
will not stand on ceremony, but cuts short the compliment 
and the story by the divine right of its telegraphic dis- 
patches. 

War is a very old story, but it is a new one to this gen- 
eration of Americans. Our own nearest relation in the 
ascending line remembers the Revolution well. How should 



Bread and the Newspaper 119 

she forget it? Did she not lose her doll, which was left 
behind, when she was carried out of Boston, about that time 
growing uncomfortable by reason of cannon-balls dropping 
in from the neighboring heights at all hours, — in token of 
which see the tower of Brattle Street Church at this very 
day? War in her memory means 'y6. As for the brush of 
1812, " we did not think much about that " ; and everybody 
knows that the Mexican business did not concern us much, 
except in its political relations. No ! war is a new thing to 
all of us who are not in the last quarter of their century. 
We are learning many strange matters from our fresh 
experience. And besides, there are new conditions of ex- 
istence which make war as it is with us very different from 
war as it has been. 

The first and obvious difiference consists in the fact that 
the whole nation is now penetrated by the ramifications of 
a network of iron nerves which flash sensation and volition 
backward and forward to and from towns and provinces as 
if they were organs and limbs of a single living body. The 
second is the vast system of iron muscles which, as it were, 
move the limbs of the mighty organism one upon another. 
What was the railroad-force which put the Sixth Regiment 
in Baltimore on the 19th of April but a contraction and 
extension of the arm of Massachusetts with a clenched fist 
full of bayonets at the end of it? 

This perpetual intercommunication, joined to the power 
of instantaneous action, keeps us always alive with excite- 
ment. It is not a breathless courier who comes back with 
the report from an army we have lost sight of for a month, 
nor a single bulletin which tells us all we are to know for 
a week of some great engagement, but almost hourly para- 
graphs, laden with truth or falsehood as the case may be, 
making us restless always for the last fact or rumor they 
are telling. And so of the movements of our armies. To- 



120 . American Essays 

night the stout lumbermen of Maine are encamped under 
their own fragrant pines. In a score or two of hours they 
are among the tobacco-fields and the slave-pens of Virginia. 
The war passion burned like scattered coals of fire in the 
households of Revolutionary times ; now it rushes all 
through the land like a flame 'over the prairie. And this 
instant diffusion of every fact and feeling produces another 
singular effect in the equalizing and steadying of public 
opinion. We may not be able to see a month ahead of us ; 
but as to what has passed a week afterwards it is as thor- 
oughly talked out and judged as it would have been in a 
whole season before our national nervous system was or- 
ganized. 

" As the wild tempest wakes the slumbering sea, 
Thou only teachest all that man can be ! " 

We indulged in the above apostrophe to War in a Phi 
Beta Kappa poem of long ago, which we liked better before 
we read Mr. Cutler's beautiful prolonged lyric delivered at 
the recent anniversary of that Society. 

Oftentimes, in paroxysms of peace and good-will towards 
all mankind, we have felt twinges of conscience about the 
passage, — especially when one of our orators showed us 
that a ship of war costs as much to build and keep as a col- 
lege, and that every port-hole we could stop would give 
us a new professor. Now we begin to think that there was 
some meaning in our poor couplet. War has taught us, 
as nothing else could, what we can be and are. It has 
exalted our manhood and our womanhood, and driven us 
all back upon our substantial human qualities, for a long 
time more or less kept out of sight by the spirit of com- 
merce, the love of art, science, or literature, or other quali- 
ties not belonging to all of us as men and women. 

It is at this very moment doing more to melt away the 



Bread and the Newspaper 121 

petty social distinctions which keep generous souls apart 
from each other, than the preaching of the Beloved Disciple 
himself would do. We are finding out that not only 
" patriotism is eloquence," but that heroism is gentility. All 
ranks are wonderfully equalized under the fire of a masked 
battery. The plain artisan or the rough fireman, who faces 
the lead and iron like a man, is the truest representative we 
can show of the heroes of Crecy and Agincourt. And if 
one of our fine gentlemen puts off his straw-colored kids 
and stands by the other, shoulder to shoulder, or leads him 
on to the attack, he is as honorable in our eyes and in theirs 
as if he were ill-dressed and his hands were soiled with 
labor. 

Even our poor '' Brahmins,'' — whom a critic in ground- 
glass spectacles (the same who grasps his statistics by the 
blade and strikes at his supposed antagonist with the 
handle) oddly confounds with the ''bloated aristocracy," 
whereas they are very commonly pallid, undervitalized, shy, 
sensitive creatures, whose only birthright is an aptitude for 
learning, — even these poor New England Brahmins of ours, 
subvirates of an organizable base as they often are, count 
as full men, if their courage is big enough for the uniform 
which hangs so loosely about their slender figures. 

A young man was drowned not very long ago in the 
river running under our windows. A few days afterwards 
a field-piece was dragged to the water's edge, and fired 
many times over the river. We asked a bystander, who 
looked like a fisherman, what that was for. It was to 
'' break the gall," he said, and so bring the drowned person 
to the surface. A strange physiological fancy and a very 
odd non sequitur; but that is not our present point. A good 
many extraordinary objects do really come to the surface 
when the great guns of war shake the waters, as when they 
roared over Charleston harbor. 



122 American Essays 

Treason came up, hideous, fit only to be huddled into its 
dishonorable grave. But the wrecks of precious virtues, 
which had been covered with the waves of prosperity, came 
up also. And all sorts of unexpected and unheard-of 
things, which had lain unseen during our national life of 
fourscore years, came up and are coming up daily, shaken 
from their bed by the concussions of the artillery bellowing 
around us. 

It is a shame to own it, but there were persons other- 
wise respectable not unwilling to say that they believed the 
old valor of Revolutionary times had died out from among 
us. They talked about our own Northern people as the 
English in the last centuries used to talk about the French, — 
Goldsmith's old soldier, it may be remembered, called one 
Englishman good for five of them. As Napoleon spoke of 
the English, again, as a nation of shopkeepers, so these 
persons affected to consider the multitude of their country- 
men as unwarlike artisans, — forgetting that Paul Revere 
taught himself the value of liberty in working upon gold, 
and Nathanael Greene fitted himself to shape armies in the 
labor of forging iron. 

These persons have learned better now. The bravery 
of our free working-people w^as overlaid, but not smothered ; 
sunken, but not drowned. The hands which had been busy 
conquering the elements had only to change their weapons 
and their adversaries, and they were as ready to conquer 
the masses of living force opposed to them as they had 
been to build towns, to dam rivers, to hunt whales, to har- 
vest ice, to hammer brute matter into every shape civiliza- 
tion can ask for. 

Another great fact came to the surface, and is coming up 
every day in new shapes, — that we are one people. It is 
easy to say that a man is a man in Maine or Minnesota, 
but not so easy to feel it, all through our bones and mar- 



Bread and the Newspaper 123 

row. The camp is deprovincializing us very fast. Brave 
Winthrop, marching with the city elegants, seems to have 
been a Httle startled to find how wonderfully human were 
the hard-handed men of the Eighth Massachusetts. It 
takes all the nonsense out of everybody, or ought to do it, 
to see how fairly the real manhood of a country is dis- 
tributed over its surface. And then, just as we are begin- 
ning to think our own soil has a monopoly of heroes as 
well as of cotton, up turns a regiment of gallant Irishmen, 
like the Sixty-ninth, to show us that continental provincial- 
ism is as bad as that of Coos County, New Hampshire, or 
of Broadway, New York. 

Here, too, side by side in the same great camp, are half 
a dozen chaplains, representing half a dozen modes of re- 
ligious belief. When the masked battery opens, does the 
" Baptist " Lieutenant believe in his heart that God takes 
better care of him than of his '' Congregationalist " 
Colonel ? Does any man really suppose, that, of a score 
of noble young fellows who have just laid down their lives 
for their country, the Homoousians are received to the man- 
sions of bliss, and the Homoiousians translated from the 
battle-field to the abodes of everlasting woe? War not 
only teaches what man can be, but it teaches also what he 
must not be. He must not be a bigot and a fool in the 
presence of that day of judgment proclaimed by the trum- 
pet which calls to battle, and where a man should have but 
two thoughts : to do his duty, and trust his Maker. Let 
our brave dead come back from the fields where they have 
fallen for law and liberty, and if you will follow them to 
their graves, you will find out what the Broad Church 
means ; the narrow church is sparing of its exclusive for- 
mulae over the coffins wrapped in the flag which the fallen 
heroes had defended ! Very little comparatively do we 
hear at such times of the dogmas on which men differ ; very 



124 American Essays 

much of the faith and trust in which all sincere Christians 
can agree. It is a noble lesson, and nothing less noisy than 
the voice of cannon can teach it so that it shall be heard 
over all the angry cries of theological disputants. 

Now, too, we have a chance to test the sagacity of our 
friends, and to get at their principles of judgment. Per- 
haps most of us will agree that our faith in domestic 
prophets has been diminished by the experience of the last 
six months. We had the notable predictions attributed to 
th-e Secretary of State, which so unpleasantly refused to 
fulfill themselves. We were infested at one time with a set 
of ominous-looking seers, who shook their heads and mut- 
tered obscurely about some mighty preparations that were 
making to substitute the rule of the minority for that of 
the majority. Organizations were darkly hinted at; some 
thought our armories would be seized; and there are not 
wanting ancient women in the neighboring University town 
who consider that the country was saved by the intrepid 
band of students who stood guard, night after night, over 
the G. R. cannon and the pile of balls in the Cambridge 
Arsenal. 

As a general rule, it is safe to say that the best prophecies 
are those which the sages remember after the event pro- 
phesied of has come to pass, and remind us that they have 
made long ago. Those who are rash enough to predict 
publicly beforehand commonly give us what they hope, or 
what they fear, or some conclusion from an abstraction of 
their own, or some guess founded on private information 
not half so good as what everybody gets who reads the 
papers, — never by any possibility a word that we can de- 
pend on, simply because there are cobwebs of contingency 
between every to-day and to-morrow that no field-glass can 
penetrate when fifty of them lie woven one over another. 
Prophesy as much as you like, but always hedge. Say that 



Bread and the Newspaper 125 

you think the rebels are weaker than is commonly supposed, 
but, on the other hand, that they may prove to be even 
stronger than is anticipated. Say what you like, — only 
don't be too peremptory and dogmatic ; we know that wiser 
men than you have been notoriously deceived in their pre- 
dictions in this very matter. 

"Ibis et redibis nunquam in bello peribis." 

Let that be your model ; and remember, on peril of 
your reputation as a prophet, not to put a stop before or 
after the nunquam. 

There are two or three facts connected with time, be- 
sides that already referred to, which strike us very forcibly 
in their relation to the great events passing around us. We 
spoke of the long period seeming to have elapsed since this 
war began. The buds were then swelling which held the 
leaves that are still green. It seems as old as Time himself. 
We cannot fail to observe how the mind brings together the 
scenes of to-day and those of the old Revolution. We shut 
up eighty years into each other like the joints of a pocket- 
telescope. When the young men from Middlesex dropped 
in Baltimore the other day, it seemed to bring Lexington 
and the other Nineteenth of April close to us. War has 
always been the mint in which the world's history has been 
coined, and now every day or week or month has a new 
medal for us. It was Warren that the first impression bore 
in the last great coinage; if it is Ellsworth now, the new 
face hardly seems fresher than the old. All battle-fields 
are alike in their main features. The young fellows who 
fell in our earlier struggle seemed like old men to us until 
within these few months ; now we remember they were 
like these fiery youth we are cheering as they go to the 
fight; it seems as if the grass of our bloody hillside was 
crimsoned but yesterday, and the cannon-ball imbedded in 



126 American Essays 

the church-tower would feel warm, if we laid our hand 
upon it. 

Nay, in this our quickened life we feel that all the battles 
from earliest time to our own day, where Right and Wrong 
have grappled, are but one great battle, varied with brief 
pauses or hasty bivouacs upon the field of conflict. The 
issues seem to vary, but it is always a right against a claim, 
and, however the struggle of the hour may go, a movement 
onward of the campaign, which uses defeat as well as vic- 
tory to serve its mighty ends. The very implements, of our 
warfare change less than we think. Our bullets and cannon- 
balls have lengthened into bolts like those which whistled 
out of old arbalests. Our soldiers fight with weapons, such 
as are pictured on the walls of Theban tombs, wearing a 
newly invented head-gear as old as the days of the 
Pyramids. 

Whatever miseries this war brings upon us, it is making 
us wiser, and, we trust, better. Wiser, for we are learning 
our weakness, our narrowness, our selfishness, our igno- 
rance, in lessons of sorrow and shame. Better, because all 
that is noble in men and women is demanded by the time, 
and our people are rising to the standard the time calls for. 
For this is the question the hour is putting to each of us: 
Are you ready, if need be, to sacrifice all that you have and 
hope for in this world, that the generations to follow you 
may inherit a whole country whose natural conditions shall 
be peace, and not a broken province which must live under 
the perpetual threat, if not in the constant presence, of war 
and all that war brings with it? If we are all ready for 
this sacrifice, battles may be lost, but the campaign and its 
grand object must be won. 

Heaven is very kind in its way of putting questions to 
mortals. We are not abruptly asked to give up all that we 
most care for, in view of the momentous issues before us. 



Bread and the Newspaper 127 

Perhaps we shall never be asked to give up all, but we have 
already been called upon to part with much that is dear to 
us, and should be ready to yield the rest as it is called for. 
The time may come when even the cheap public print shall 
be a burden our means cannot support, and we can only 
listen in the square that was once the market-place to the 
voices of those who proclaim defeat or victory. Then there 
will be only our daily food left. When we have nothing to 
read and nothing to eat, it will be a favorable moment to 
offer a compromise. At present we have all that nature 
absolutely demands, — we can live on bread and the news- 
paper. 



WALKING 

Henry David Thoreau 

I WISH to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom 
and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture 
merely civil, — to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part 
and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I 
wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an 
emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civiliza- 
tion : the minister and the school-committee, and every one 
of you will take care of that. 

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of 
my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking 
walks, — who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which 
word is beautifully derived from '' idle people who roved 
about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, 
under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre/' to the Holy 
Land, till the children exclaimed, '' There goes a Sainte- 
Terrer," a Saunterer, — a Holy-Lander. They who never 
go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are 
indeed mere idlers and vagabonds ; but they who do go 
there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. 
Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, 
without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, 
will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home 
everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. 
He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest 
vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no 

128 



Walking 129 

more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the 
while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But 
I prefer the first, which, indeed, is the most probable deriva- 
tion. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some 
Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy 
Land from the hands of the Infidels. 

It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the 
walkers, nowadays, who undertake no persevering, never- 
ending enterprises. Our expeditions are but tours, and 
come round again at evening to the old hearth-side from 
which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps. 
We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the 
spirit of undying adventure, never to return, — prepared to 
send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our deso- 
late kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, 
and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and 
never see them again, — if you have paid your debts, and 
made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free 
man, then you are ready for a walk. 

To come down to my own experience, my companion and 
I, for I sometimes have a companion, take pleasure in fancy- 
ing ourselves knights of a new, or rather an old, order, — 
not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Ritters or riders, but 
Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable class, I trust. 
The chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the 
Rider seems now to reside in, or perchance to have subsided 
into, the Walker, — not the Knight, biit Walker Errant. 
He is a sort of fourth estate, outside of Church and State 
and People. 

We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts practiced 
this noble art ; though, to tell the truth, at least, if their own 
assertions are to be received, most of my townsmen would 
fain walk sometimes, as I do, but they cannot. No wealth 
can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence, 



130 American Essays 

which are the capital in this profession. It comes only by 
the grace of God. It requires a direct dispensation from 
Heaven to become a walker. You must be born into the 
family of the Walkers. Ambulator nascitur, non fit. Some 
of my townsmen, it is true, can remember and have described 
to me some walks which they took ten years ago, in which 
they were so blessed as to lose themselves for half an hour 
in the woods ; but I know very well that they have confined 
themselves to the highway ever since, whatever pretensions 
they may make to belong to this select class. No doubt they 
were elevated for a moment as by the reminiscence of a 
previous state of existence, when even they were foresters 
and outlaws. 

"When he came to grene wode, 
In a mery mornynge, 
There he herde the notes small 
Of byrdes mery syngynge. 

" It is ferre gone^ sayd Robyn, 
That I was last here; 
Me lyste a lytell for to shote 
At the donne dere." 

I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, 
unless I spend four hours. a day at least, — and it is com- 
monly more than that, — sauntering through the woods and 
over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly 
engagements. You may safely say, A penny for your 
thoughts, or a thousand pounds. When sometimes I am 
reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their 
shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, 
sitting with crossed legs, so many of them, — as if the legs 
were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon, — I 
think that they deserve some credit for not having all com- 
mitted suicide long ago. 

I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day with- 



Walking 131 

out acquiring some rust, and when sometimes I have stolen 
forth for a walk at the eleventh hour of four o'clock in the 
afternoon, too late to redeem the day, when the shades of 
night were already beginning to be mingled with the day- 
light, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned 
for, — I confess that I am astonished at the power of en- 
durance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my 
neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the 
whole day for weeks and months, ay, and years almost to- 
gether. I know not what manner of stuff they are of, — 
sitting there now at three o'clock in the afternoon, as if it 
were three o'clock in the morning. Bonaparte may talk of 
the three-o'clock-in-the-morning courage, but it is nothing 
to the courage which can sit down cheerfully at this hour 
in the afternoon over against one's self whom you have 
known all the morning, to starve out a garrison to whom 
you are bound by such strong ties of sympathy. I wonder 
that about this time, or say between four and five o'clock 
in the afternoon, too late for the morning papers and too 
early for the evening ones, there is not a general explosion 
heard up and down the street, scattering a legion of anti- 
quated and house-bred notions and whims to the four winds 
for an airing, — and so the evil cure itself. 

How womankind, who are confined to the house still more 
than men, stand it I do not know; but I have ground to 
suspect that most of them do not stand it at all. When, 
early in a summer afternoon, we have been shaking the 
dust of the village from the skirts of our garments, making 
haste past those houses with purely Doric or Gothic fronts, 
which have such an air of repose about them, my com- 
panion whispers that probably about these times their occu- 
pants are all gone to bed. Then it is that I appreciate the 
beauty and the glory of architecture, which itself never 



132 American Essays 

turns in, but forever stands out and erect, keeping watch 
over the slumberers. 

No doubt temperament, and, above all, age, have a good 
deal to do with it. As a man grows older, his ability to 
sit still and follow indoor occupations increases. He grows 
vespertinal in his habits as the evening of life approaches, 
till at last he comes forth only just before sundown, and 
gets all the walk that he requires in half an hour. 

But the walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin 
to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine 
at stated hours, — as the swinging of dumb-bells or chairs; 
but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day. If you 
would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life. 
Think of a man's swinging dumb-bells for his health, when 
those springs are bubbling up in far-off pastures unsought 
by him! 

Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to 
be the only beast which ruminates when walking. When a 
traveler asked Wordsworth's servant to show him her mas- 
ter's study, she answered, *' Here is his library, but his 
study is out of doors." 

Living much out of doors, in the sun and wind, will no 
doubt produce a certain roughness of character, — will cause 
a thicker cuticle to grow over some of the finer qualities 
of our nature, as on the face and hands, or as severe manual 
labor robs the hands of some of their delicacy of touch. So 
staying in the house, on the other hand, may produce a soft- 
ness and smoothness, not to say thinness of skin, accom- 
panied by an increased sensibility to certain impressions. 
Perhaps we should be more susceptible to some influences 
important to our intellectual and moral growth, if the sun 
had shone and the wind blown on us a little less; and no 
doubt it is a nice matter to proportion rightly the thick 
and thin skin. But methinks that is a scurf that will fall 



Walking 133 

off fast enough, — that the natural remedy is to be found 
in the proportion which the night bears to the day, the 
winter to the summer, thought to experience. There will be 
so much the more air and sunshine in our thoughts. The 
callous palms of the laborer are conversant with finer tissues 
of self-respect and heroism, whose touch thrills the heart, 
than the languid fingers of idleness. That is mere senti- 
mentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far 
from the tan and callus of experience. 

When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods : 
what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden 
or a mall? Even some sects of philosophers have felt the 
necessity of importing the woods to themselves, since they 
did not go to the woods. '' They planted groves and walks 
of Platanes," where they took subdiales ambulationes in por- 
ticos open to the air. Of course it is of no use to direct 
our steps to the woods, if they do not carry us thither. I 
am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into 
the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my 
afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupa- 
tions and my obligations to society. . But it sometimes hap- 
pens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought 
of some work will run in my head, and I am not where my 
body is, — I am out of my senses. In my walks I would 
fain return to my senses. What business have I in the 
woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods? 
I suspect myself, and cannot help a shudder, when I find 
myself so implicated even in what are called good works, — 
for this may sometimes happen. 

My vicinity affords many good walks ; and though for so 
many years I have walked almost every day, and sometimes 
for several days together, I have not yet exhausted them. 
An absolutely new prospect is a great happiness, and I can 
still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours' walking 



134 American Essays 

will carry me to as strange a country as I expect ever to see. 
A single farmhouse which I had not seen before is some- 
times as good as the dominions of the King of Dahomey. 
There is in fact a sort of harmony discoverable between 
the capabilities of the landscape within a circle of ten miles' 
radius, or the limits of an afternoon walk, and the three- 
score years and ten of human life. It will never become 
quite familiar to you. 

Nowadays almost all man's improvements, so called, as 
the building of houses, and the cutting down of the forest 
and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and 
make it more and more tame and cheap. A people who 
would begin by burning the fences and let the forest stand ! 
I saw the fences half consumed, their ends lost in the mid- 
dle of the prairie, and some worldly miser with a surveyor 
looking after his bounds, while heaven had taken place 
around him, and he did not see the angels going to and fro, 
but was looking for an old post-hole in the midst of para-^ 
disc. I looked again, and saw him standing in the middle 
of a boggy, stygian fen, surrounded by devils, and he had 
found his bounds withgut a doubt, three little stones, where 
a stake had been driven, and looking nearer, I saw that the 
Prince of Darkness was his surveyor. 

I can easily walk ten, fifteen, twenty, any number of 
miles, commencing at my own door, without going by any 
house, without crossing a road except where the fox and 
the mink do : first along by the river, and then the brook, 
and then the meadow and the woodside. There are square 
miles in my vicinity which have no inhabitant. From many 
a hill I can see civilization and the abodes of man afar. The 
farmers and their works are scarcely more obvious than 
woodchucks and their burrows. Man and his affairs, 
church and state and school, trade and commerce, and 
manufactures and agriculture, even politics, the most alarm- 



Walking 135 

ing of them all, — I am pleased to see how little space they 
occupy in the landscape. Politics is but a narrow field, and 
that still narrower highway yonder leads to it. I some- 
times direct the traveler thither. If you would go to the 
political world, follow the great road, — follow that market- 
man, keep his dust in your eyes, and it will lead you 
straight to it; for it, too, has its place merely, and does 
not occupy all space. I pass from it as from a bean-field 
into the forest, and it is forgotten. In one half-hour I can 
walk off to some portion of the earth's surface where a 
man does not stand from one year's end to another, and 
there, consequently, politics are not, for they are but as the 
cigar-smoke of a man. 

The village is the place to which the roads tend, a sort 
of expansion of the highway, as a lake of a river. It is 
the body of which roads are the arms and legs, — a trivial 
or quadrivial place, the thoroughfare and ordinary of trav- 
elers. The word is from the Latin villa, which, together 
with via, a way, or more anciently ved and vella, Varro 
derives from veho, to carry, because the villa is the place 
to and from which things are carried. They who got their 
living by teaming were said vellaturam facere. Hence, too, 
apparently, the Latin word vilis and our vile; also villain. 
This suggests what kind of degeneracy villagers are liable 
to. They are wayworn by the travel that goes by and over 
them, without traveling themselves. 

Some do not walk at all; others walk in the highways; 
a few walk across lots. Roads are made for horses and 
men of business. I do not travel in them much, compara- 
tively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any tavern or 
grocery or livery-stable or depot to which they lead. I 
am a good horse to travel, but not from choice a roadster. 
The landscape-painter uses the figures of men to mark a 
road. He would not make that use of my figure. I walk 



136 American Essays 

out into a Nature such as the old prophets and poets, Menu, 
Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may name it 
America, but it is not America : neither Americus Vespucius, 
nor Columbus, nor the rest were the discoverers of it. 
There is a truer account of it in mythology than in any his- 
tory of America, so called, that I have seen. 

However, there are a few old roads that may be trodden 
with profit, as if they led somewhere now that they are 
nearly discontinued. There is the Old Marlborough Road, 
which does not go to Marlborough now, methinks, unless 
that is Marlborough where it carries me. I am the bolder 
to speak of it here, because I presume that there are one or 
two such roads in every town. 

THE OLD MARLBOROUGH ROAD. 

Where they once dug for money, 

But never found any ; 

Where sometimes Martial Miles 

Singly files, 

And Elijah W^ood, . 

I fear for no good : 

No other man, 

Save Elisha Dugan, — 

O man of wild habits, 

Partridges and rabbits, 

Who hast no cares 

Only to set snares, 

Who liv'st all alone, 

Close to the bone. 

And where life is sweetest 

Constantly eatest. 
When the spring stirs my blood 
With the instinct to travel, 
I can get enough gravel 
On the Old Marlborough Road. 

Nobody repairs it, 

For nobody wears it; 

It is a living way, 

As the Christians say. 



Walking 137 

Not many there be 
Who enter therein, 
Only the guests of the 

Irishman Quin. 
What is it, what is it. 

But a direction out there, 
And the bare possibility 
Of going somewhere? 

Great guideboards of stone, 

But travelers none; 

Cenotaphs of the towns 

Named on their crowns. 

It is worth going to see 

Where you might be. 

What king 

Did the thing, 

I am still wondering; 

Set up how or when, 

By what selectmen, 

Gourgas or Lee, 

Clark or Darby? 

They're a great endeavor 

To be something forever; 

Blank tablets of stone, 

Where a traveler might groan, 

And in one sentence 

Grave all that is known ; 

Which another might read, 

In his extreme need. 

I know one or two 

Lines that would do. 

Literature that might stand 

All over the land. 

Which a man could remember 

Till next December, 

And read again in the spring, 

After the thawing. 
If with fancy unfurled 

You leave your abode. 
You may go round the world 
By the Old Marlborough Road. 



At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is 
not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the 



138 American Essays 

walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day 
will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called 
pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and 
exclusive pleasure only, — when fences shall be multiplied, 
and man-traps and other engines invented to confine men to 
the public road, and walking over the surface of God's eartii 
shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman's 
grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to ex- 
clude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us im- 
prove our opportunities, then, before the evil days come. 

What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine 
whither we will walk ? I believe that there is a subtile mag- 
netism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will 
direct us aright. It is not indifferent to us which way we 
walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from 
heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We 
would fain take that walk, never yet taken by us through 
this actual world, which is perfectly symbolical of the path 
which we love to travel in the interior and ideal world ; and 
sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult to choose our direc- 
tion, because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea. 

When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet 
whither I will bend my steps, and submit myself to my in- 
stinct to decide for me, I find, strange and whimsical as it 
may seem, that I finally and inevitably settle southwest, 
toward some particular wood or meadow or deserted pas- 
ture or hill in that direction. My needle is slow to settle, — 
varies a few degrees, and does not always point due south- 
west, it is true, and it has good authority for this variation, 
but it always settles between west and south-south-west. 
The future lies that way to me, and the earth seems more 
unexhausted and richer on that side. The outline which 
would bound my walks would be, not a circle, but a 



Walking 139 

parabola, or rather like one of those cometary orbits 
which have been thought to be non-returning curves, in 
this case opening westward, in which my house occupies 
the place of the sun. I turn round and round irresolute 
sometimes for a quarter of an hour, until I decide, for a 
thousandth time, that I will walk into the southwest or west. 
Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free. 
Thither no business leads me. It is hard for me to believe 
that I shall find fair landscapes or sufficient wildness and 
freedom behind the eastern horizon. I am not excited by 
the prospect of a walk thither; but I believe that the forest 
which I see in the western horizon stretches uninterruptedly 
toward the setting sun, and there are no towns nor cities in 
it of enough consequence to disturb me. Let me live where 
I will, on this side is the city, on that the wilderness, and 
ever I am leaving the city more and more, and withdrawing 
into the wilderness. I should not lay so much stress on this 
fact, if I did not believe that something like this is the pre- 
vailing tendency of my countrymen. I must walk toward 
Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation 
is moving, and I may say that mankind progress from east to 
west. Within a few years we have witnessed the phe- 
nomenon of a southeastward migration, in the settlement of 
Australia ; but this affects us as a retrograde movement, and 
judging from the moral and physical character of the first 
generation of Australians, has not yet proved a successful 
experiment. The eastern Tartars think that there is nothing 
west beyond Thibet. " The world ends there," say they, 
" beyond there is nothing but a shoreless sea." It is unmiti- 
gated East where they live. 

We go eastward to realize history and study the works 
of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we 
go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise 
and adventure. The Atlantic is a Lethean stream, in our pas- 



140 American Essays 

sage over which we have had an opportunity to forget the 
Old World and its institutions. If we do not succeed this 
time, there is perhaps one more chance for the race left be- 
fore it arrives on the banks of the Styx ; and that is in the 
Lethe of the Pacific, which is three times as wide. 

I know not how significant it is, or how far it is an evi- 
dence of singularity, that an individual should thus consent 
in his pettiest walk with the general movement of the race ; 
but I know that something akin to the migratory instinct in 
birds and quadrupeds, — which, in some instances, is known 
to have affected the squirrel tribe, impelling them to a gen- 
eral and mysterious movement, in which they were seen, say 
some, crossing the broadest rivers, each on its particular 
chip, with its tail raised for a sail, and bridging narrower 
streams with their dead, — that something like the furor 
which affects the domestic cattle in the spring, and which is 
referred to a worm in their tails, — affects both nations 
and individuals, either perennially or from time to time. 
Not a flock of wild geese cackles over our town, but it to 
some extent unsettles the value of real estate here, and, if 
I were a broker, I should probably take that disturbance into 
account. 

" Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages, 
And palmeres for to seken strange strondes." 

Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire 
to go to a West as distant and as fair as that into which 
the sun goes down. He appears to migrate westward daily, 
and tempt us to follow him. He is the Great Western 
Pioneer whom the nations follow. We dream all night of 
those mountain-ridges in the horizon, though they may be 
of vapor only, which were last gilded by his rays. The 
island of Atlantis, and the islands and gardens of the 
Hesperides, a sort of terrestrial paradise, appear to have 



Walking 141 

been the Great West of the ancients, enveloped in mys- 
tery and poetry. Who has not seen in imagination, when 
looking into the sunset sky, the gardens of the Hesperides, 
and the foundation of all those fables ? 

Columbus felt the westward tendency more strongly than 
any before. He obeyed it, and found a New World for 
Castile and Leon. The herd of men in those days scented 
fresh pastures from afar. 

'' And now the sun had stretched out all the hills, 
And now was dropped into the western bay; 
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue; 
To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new." 

Where on the globe can there be found an area of equal 
extent with that occupied by the bulk of our States, so 
fertile and so rich and varied in its productions, and at the 
same time so habitable by the European, as this is? 
Michaux, who knew but part of them, says that " the species 
of large trees are much more numerous in North America 
than in Europe ; in the United States there are more than one 
hundred and forty species that exceed thirty feet in height; 
in France there are but thirty that attain this size." Later 
botanists more than confirm his observations. Humboldt 
came to America to realize his youthful dreams of a 
tropical vegetation, and he beheld it in its greatest per- 
fection in the primitive forests of the Amazon, the most 
gigantic wilderness on the earth, which he has so eloquently 
described. The geographer Guyot, himself a European, 
goes farther, — farther than I am ready to follow him; yet 
not when he says, — '' As the plant is made for the animal, as 
the vegetable world is made for the animal world, America 
is made for the man of the Old World. . . . The man of 
the Old World sets out upon his way. Leaving the high- 
lands of Asia, he descends from station to station towards 
Europe. Each of his steps is marked by a new civilization 



142 American Essays 

superior to the preceding, by a greater power of develop- 
ment. Arrived at the Atlantic, he pauses on the shore of this 
unknown ocean, the bounds of which he knows not, and 
turns upon his footprints for an instant." When he has 
exhausted the rich soil of Europe, and reinvigorated him- 
self, '' then recommences his adventurous career westward 
as in the earliest ages." So far Guyot. 

From this western impulse coming in contact with the 
barrier of the Atlantic sprang the commerce and enterprise 
of modern times. The younger Michaux, in his Travels 
West of the Alleghanies in 1802, says that the common in- 
quiry in the newly settled West was, '' ' From what part 
of the world have you come? ' As if these vast and fertile 
regions would naturally be the place of meeting and com- 
mon country of all the inhabitants of the globe." 

To use an obsolete Latin word, I might say. Ex Oriente 
lux; ex Occidente frux. From the East light; from the 
West fruit. 

Sir Francis Head, an English traveler and a Governor- 
General of Canada, tells us that " in both the northern and 
southern hemispheres of the New World, Nature has not 
only outlined her works on a larger scale, but has painted 
the whole picture with brighter and more costly colors than 
she used in delineating and in beautifying the Old World. 
. . . The heavens of America appear infinitely higher, the 
sky is bluer, the air is fresher, the cold is intenser, the moon 
looks larger, the stars are brighter, the thunder is louder, the 
lightning is vivider, the wind is stronger, the rain is heavier, 
the mountains are higher, the rivers longer, the forests 
bigger, the plains broader." This statement will do at least 
to set against Buffon's account of this part of the world and 
its productions. 

Linnaeus said long ago, " Nescio quae facies Iceta, glabra 
plantis Americanis: I know not what there is of joyous and 



Walking 143 

smooth in the aspect of American plants ; " and I think that 
in this country there are no, or at most very few, Africance 
bestice, African beasts, as the Romans called them, and that 
in this respect also it is peculiarly fitted for the habitation 
of man. We are told that within three miles of the center 
of the East-Indian city of Singapore, some of the in- 
habitants are annually carried off by tigers ; but the traveler 
can lie down in the woods at night almost anywhere in North 
America without fear of wild beasts. 

These are encouraging testimonies. If the moon looks 
larger here than in Europe, probably the sun looks larger 
also. If the heavens of America appear infinitely higher, 
and the stars brighter, I trust that these facts are symbolical 
of the height to which the philosophy and poetry and re- 
ligion of her inhabitants may one day soar. At length, per- 
chance, the immaterial heaven will appear as much higher 
to the American mind, and the intimations that star it as 
rnuch brighter. For I believe that climate does thus react on 
man, — as there is something in the mountain-air that feeds 
the spirit and inspires. Will not man grow to greater per- 
fection intellectually as well as physically under these in- 
fluences ? Or is it unimportant how many foggy days there 
are in his life? I trust that we shall be more imaginative, 
that our thoughts will be clearer, fresher, and more ethereal, 
as our sky, — our understanding more comprehensive and 
broader, like our plains, — our intellect generally on a 
grander scale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers and 
mountains and forests, — and our hearts shall even cor- 
respond in breadth and depth and grandeur to our inland 
seas. Perchance there will appear to the traveler some- 
thing, he knows not what, of IcFfa and glabra, of joyous and 
serene, in our very faces. Else to what end does the world 
go on, and why was America discovered ? 

To Americans I hardly need to say, — 



144 American Essays 

" Westward the star of empire takes its way." 

As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam 
in paradise was more favorably situated on the whole than 
the backwoodsman in this country. 

Our sympathies in Massachusetts are not confined to 
New England; though we may be estranged from the 
South, we sympathize with the West. There is the home 
of the younger sons, as among the Scandinavians they took 
to the sea for their inheritance. It is too late to be studying 
Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the 
slang of to-day. 

Some months ago I went to see a panorama of the Rhine. 
It was like a dream of the Middle Ages. I floated down its 
historic stream in something more than imagination, under 
bridges built by the Romans, and repaired by later heroes, 
past cities and castles whose very names were music to my 
ears, and each of which was the subject of a legend. 
There were Ehrenbreitstein and Rolandseck and Coblentz, 
which I knew only in history. They were ruins that in- 
terested me chiefly. There seemed to come up from its 
waters and its vine-clad hills and valleys a hushed music 
as of Crusaders departing for the Holy Land. I floated 
along under the spell of enchantment, as if I had been 
transported to an heroic age, and breathed an atmosphere 
of chivalry. 

Soon after, I went to see a panorama of the Mississippi, 
and as I worked my way up the river in the light of to-day, 
and saw the steamboats wooding up, counted the rising 
cities, gazed on the fresh ruins of Nauvoo, beheld the In- 
dians moving west across the stream, and, as before I had 
looked up the Moselle now looked up the Ohio and the 
Missouri, and heard the legends of Dubuque and of We- 
nona's Cliff, — still thinking more of the future than of the 



Walking 145 

past or present, — I saw that this was a Rhine stream of a 
different kind; that the foundations of castles were yet to 
be laid, and the famous bridges were yet to be thrown over 
the river; and I felt that this was the heroic age itself, 
though we know it not, for the hero is commonly the 
simplest and obscurest of men. 

The West of which I speak is but another name for the 
Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in 
Wildness is the preservation of the World. Every tree 
sends its fibers forth in search of the Wild. The cities 
import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From 
the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which 
brace mankind. Our ancestors were savages. The story 
of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a 
meaningless fable. The founders of every State which 
has risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and 
vigor from a similar wild source. It was because the 
children of the Empire were not suckled by the wolf that 
they were conquered and displaced by the children of the 
Northern forests who were. 

I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the 
night in which the corn grows. We require an infusion of 
hemlock-spruce or arbor-vitse in our tea. There is a dif- 
ference between eating and drinking for strength and from 
m.ere gluttony. The Hottentots eagerly devour the marrow 
of the koodoo and other antelopes raw, as a matter of 
course. Some of our Northern Indians eat raw the marrow 
of the Arctic reindeer, as well as various other parts, in- 
cluding the summits of the antlers, as long as they are soft. 
And herein, perchance, they have stolen a march on the 
cooks of Paris. They get what usually goes to feed the 
fire. This is probably better than stall-fed beef and slaugh- 
ter-house pork to make a man of. Give me a wildness 



146 American Essays 

whose glance no civilization can endure, — as if we lived on 
the marrow of koodoos devoured raw. 

There are some intervals which border the strain of 
the wood-thrush, to which I would migrate, — wild lands 
where no settler has squatted; to which, methinks, I am 
already acclimated. 

The African hunter Cummings tells us that the skin 
of the eland, as well as that of most other antelopes just 
killed, emits the most delicious perfume of trees and grass. 
I would have every man so much like a wild antelope, so 
much a part and parcel of Nature, that his very person 
should thus sweetly advertise our senses of his presence, 
and remind us of those parts of Nature which he most 
haunts. I feel no disposition to be satirical, when the 
trapper's coat emits the odor of musquash even; it is a 
sweeter scent to me than that which commonly exhales from 
the merchant's or the scholar's garments. When I go 
into their wardrobes and handle their vestments, I am 
reminded of no grassy plains and flowery meads which 
they have frequented, but of dusty merchants' exchanges 
and libraries rather. 

A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and 
perhaps olive is a fitter color than white for a man, — a 
denizen of the woods. " The pale white man ! " I do not 
wonder that the African pitied him. Darwin the naturalist 
says, '* A white man bathing by the side of a Tahitian 
was like a plant bleached by the gardener's art, compared 
with a fine, dark green one, growing vigorously in the 
open fields." 

Ben Jonson exclaims, — 

" How near to good is what is fair! " 
So I would say, — 

How near to good is what is wild! 



Walking 147 

Life consists with wildness. The most aHve is the wildest. 
Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One 
who pressed forward incessantly and never rested from 
his labors, who grew fast and made infinite demands on 
life, would always find himself in a new country or wilder- 
ness, and surrounded by the raw material of life. He 
would be climbing over the prostrate stems of primitive 
forest-trees. 

Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and culti- 
vated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious 
and quaking swamps. When, formerly, I have analyzed 
my partiality for some farm which I had contemplated 
purchasing, I have frequently found that I was attracted 
solely by a few square rods of impermeable and unfathom- 
able bog, — a natural sink in one corner of it. That was the 
jewel which dazzled me. I derive more of my subsistence 
from the swamps which surround my native town than from 
the cultivated gardens in the village. There are no richer 
parterres to my eyes than the dense beds of dwarf 
andromeda (Cassandra calyculata) which cover these tender 
places on the earth's surface. Botany cannot go farther 
than tell me the names of the shrubs which grow there, — 
the high-blueberry, panicled andromeda, lamb-kill, azalea, 
and rhodora, — all standing in the quaking sphagnum. I 
often think that I should like to have my house front on 
this mass of dull red bushes, omitting other flower pots 
and borders, transplanted spruce and trim box, even 
graveled walks, — to have this fertile spot under my win- 
dows, not a few imported barrow-fulls of soil only to 
cover the sand which was thrown out in digging the cellar. 
Why not put my house, my parlor, behind this plot, instead 
of behind that meager assemblage of curiosities, that poor 
apology for a Nature and Art, which I call my front- 
yard? It is an effort to clear up and make a decent ap- 



148 American Essays 

pearance when the carpenter and mason have departed, 
though done as much for the passer-by as the dweller 
within. The most tasteful front-yard fence was never an 
agreeable object of study to me; the most elaborate orna- 
ments, acorn-tops, or what not, soon wearied and dis- 
gusted me. Bring your sills up to the very edge of the 
swamp, then, (though it may not be the best place for a 
dry cellar,) so that there be no access on that side to 
citizens. Front-yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, 
through, and you could go in the back way. 

Yes, though you may think me perverse, if it were pro- 
posed to me to dwell in the neighborhood of the most 
beautiful garden that ever human art contrived, or else 
of a Dismal swamp, I should certainly decide for the swamp. 
How vain, then, have been all your labors, citizens, for me ! 

My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward 
dreariness. Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilder- 
ness ! In the desert, pure air and solitude compensate for 
want of moisture and fertility. The traveler Burton says 
of it, — " Your morale improves ; you become frank and 
cordial, hospitable and single-minded. ... In the desert, 
spirituous liquors excite only disgust. There is a keen 
enjoyment in a mere animal existence." They who have 
been traveling long on the steppes of Tartary say, — " On 
reentering cultivated lands, the agitation, perplexity, and 
turmoil of civilization oppressed and suffocated us; the 
air seemed to fail us, and we felt every moment as if about 
to die of asphyxia." When I would recreate myself, I 
seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable, 
and, to the citizen, most dismal swamp. I enter a swamp as a 
sacred place, — a sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, 
the marrow of Nature. The wild-wood covers the virgin 
mold, — and the same soil is good for men and for trees. 
A man's health requires as many acres of meadow to his 



Walking , 149 

prospect as his farm does loads of muck. There are the 
strong meats on which he feeds. A town is saved, not 
more by the righteous men in it than by the woods and 
swamps that surround it. A township where one primitive 
forest waves above, while another primitive forest rots 
below, — such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and 
potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. 
In such a soil grew Homer and Confucius and the rest, and 
out of such a wilderness comes the Reformer eating locusts 
and wild honey. 

To preserve wild animals imphes- generally the creation 
of a forest for them to dwell in or resort to. So it is with 
man. A hundred years ago they sold bark in our streets 
peeled from our own woods. In the very aspect of those 
primitive and rugged trees, there was, methinks, a tanning 
principle which hardened and consolidated the fibers of 
men's thoughts. Ah ! already I shudder for these com- 
paratively degenerate days of my native village, when 
you cannot collect a load of bark of good thickness, — and 
we no longer produce tar and turpentine. 

The civilized nations — Greece, Rome, England — have 
been sustained by the primitive forests which anciently 
rotted where they stand. They survive as long as the soil 
is not exhausted. Alas for human culture! little is to be 
expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is ex- 
hausted, and it is compelled to make manure of the bones 
of its fathers. There the poet sustains himself merely by 
his own superfluous fat, and the philosopher comes down 
on his marrow-bones. 

It is said to be the task of the American "to work the 
virgin soil," and that " agriculture here already assumes 
proportions unknown everywhere else." I think that the 
farmer displaces the Indian even because he redeems the 
meadow, and so makes himself stronger and in some re- 



150 American Essays 

spects more natural. I was surveying for a man the other 
day a single straight line one hundred and thirty-two rods 
long, through a swamp, at whose entrance might have 
been written the words which Dante read over the entrance 
to the infernal regions, — " Leave all hope, ye that enter," — 
that is, of ever getting out again; where at one time I 
saw my employer actually up to his neck and swimming for 
his life in his property, though it was still winter. He 
had another similar swamp which I could not survey at all, 
because it was completely under water, and nevertheless, 
with regard to a third swamp, which I did survey from a 
distance, he remarked to me, true to his instincts, that he 
would not part with it for any consideration, on account 
of the mud which it contained. And that man intends to 
put a girdling ditch round the whole in the course of forty 
months, and so redeem it by the magic of his spade. I 
refer to him only as the type of a class. 

The weapons with which we have gained our most im- 
portant victories, which should be handed down as heir- 
looms from father to son, are not the sword and the lance, 
but the bushwhack, the turf-cutter, the spade, and the bog- 
hoe, rusted with the blood of many a meadow, and be- 
grimed with the dust of many a hard-fought field. The 
very winds blew the Indian's cornfield into the meadow, 
and pointed out the way which he had not the skill to 
follow. He had no better implement with which to in- 
trench himself in the land than a clam-shell. But the 
farmer is armed with plow and spade. 

In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness 
is but another name for tameness. It is the uncivilized 
free and wild thinking in Hamlet and the Iliad, in 
all the scriptures and mythologies, not learned in the 
schools, that delights us. As the wild duck is more swift 
and beautiful than the tame, so is the wild — the mallard — 



Walking 151 

thought, which 'mid falHng dews wings its way above 
the fens. A truly good book is something as natural, and 
as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a 
wild flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in 
the jungles of the East. Genius is a light which makes the 
darkness visible, like the lightning's flash, which perchance 
shatters the temple of knowledge itself, — and not a taper 
lighted at the hearthstone of the race, which pales before 
the light of common day. 

English literature, from the days of the minstrels to the 
Lake Poets, — Chaucer and Spenser and Milton, and even 
Shakespeare, included, — breathes no quite fresh and, 
in this sense, wild strain. It is an essentially tame and 
civilized literature, reflecting Greece and Rome. Her wil- 
derness is a green wood, — her wild man a Robin Hood. 
There is plenty of genial love of Nature, but not so much 
of Nature herself. Her chronicles inform us when her 
wild animals, but not when the wild man in her, became 
extinct. 

The science of Humboldt is one thing, poetry is another 
thing. The poet to-day, notwithstanding all the discover- 
ies of science, and the accumulated learning of mankind, 
enjoys no advantage over Homer. 

Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? 
He would be a poet who could impress the winds and 
streams into his service, to speak for him ; who nailed words 
to their primitive senses, as farmers drive down stakes 
in the spring, which the frost has heaved; who derived his 
words as often as he used them, — transplanted them to his 
page with earth adhering to their roots ; whose words were 
so true and fresh and natural that they would appear to 
expand like the buds at the approach of spring, though they 
lay half-smothered between two musty leaves in a library, 
— ay, to bloom and bear fruit there, after their kind, an- 



152 American Essays 

nually, for the faithful reader, in sympathy with surround- 
ing Nature. 

I do not know of any poetry to quote which adequately 
expresses this yearning for the Wild. Approached from 
this side, the best poetry is tame. I do not know where 
to find in any literature, ancient or modern, any account 
which contents me of that Nature with which even I am 
acquainted. You will perceive that I demand something 
which no Augustan nor Elizabethan age, which no culture, 
in short, can give. Mythology comes nearer to it than any- 
thing. How much more fertile a Nature, at least, has Gre- 
cian mythology its root in than English literature ! Myth- 
ology is the crop which the Old World bore before its 
soil was exhausted, before the fancy and imagination were 
affected with blight; and which it still bears, wherever its 
pristine vigor is unabated. All other literatures endure only 
as the elms which overshadow our houses; but this is like 
the great dragon-tree of the Western Isles, as old as man- 
kind, and, whether that does or not, will endure as long; 
for the decay of other literatures makes the soil in which 
it thrives. 

The West is preparing to add its fables to those of the 
East. The valleys of the Ganges, the Nile, and the Rhine, 
having yielded their crop, it remains to be seen what the 
valleys of the Amazon, the Plate, the Orinoco, the St. 
Lawrence, and the Mississippi will produce. Perchance, 
when, in the course of ages, American liberty has become 
a fiction of the past, — as it is to some extent a fiction of 
the present, — the poets of the world will be inspired by 
American mythology. 

The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less 
true, though they may not recommend themselves to the 
sense which is most common among Englishmen and 
Americans to-day. It is not every truth that recommends 



Walking 153 

itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the 
wild clematis as well as for the cabbage. Some expressions 
of truth are reminiscent, — others merely sensible, as the 
phrase is, — others prophetic. Some forms of disease, even, 
may prophesy forms of health. The geologist has discov- 
ered that the figures of serpents, griffins, flying dragons, and 
other fanciful embellishments of heraldry, have their proto- 
types in the forms of fossil species which were extinct 
before man was created, and hence " indicate a faint and 
shadowy knowledge of a previous state of organic exist- 
ence." The Hindoos dreamed that the earth rested on an 
elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on 
a serpent ; and though it may be an unimportant coincidence, 
it will not be out of place here to state, that a fossil tortoise 
has lately been discovered in Asia large enough to support 
an elephant. I confess that I am partial to these wild 
fancies, which transcend the order of time and develop- 
ment. They are the sublimest recreation of the intellect. 
The partridge loves peas, but not those that go with her 
into the pot. 

In short, all good things are wild and free. There is 
something in a strain of music, whether produced by an 
instrument or by the human voice, — take the sound of a 
bugle in a summer night, for instance, — which by its wild- 
ness, to speak without satire, reminds me of the cries 
emitted by wild beasts in their native forests. It is so 
much of their wildness as I can understand. Give me 
for my friends and neighbors wild men, not tame ones. 
The wildness of the savage is but a faint symbol of the 
awful ferity with which good men and lovers meet. 

I love even to see the domestic animals reassert their 
native rights, — any evidence that they have not wholly lost 
their original wild habits and vigor ; as when my neighbor's 
cow breaks out of her pasture early in the spring and boldly 



154 American Essays 

swims the river, a cold, gray tide, twenty-five or thirty rods 
wide, swollen by the melted snow. It is the buffalo crossing 
the Mississippi. This exploit confers some dignity on the 
herd in my eyes, — already dignified. The seeds of instinct 
are preserved under the thick hides of cattle and horses, 
like seeds in the bowels of the earth, an indefinite period. 

Any sportiveness in cattle is unexpected. I saw one day 
a herd of a dozen bullocks and cows running about and 
frisking in unwieldy sport, like huge rats, even like kittens. 
They shook their heads, raised their tails, and rushed up 
and down a hill, and I perceived by their horns, as well as 
by their activity, their relation to the deer tribe. But, alas ! 
a sudden loud Whoa! would have damped their ardor at 
once, reduced them from venison to beef, and stiffened their 
sides and sinews like the locomotive. Who but the Evil 
One has cried, ''Whoa!" to mankind? Indeed, the life of 
cattle, like that of many men, is but a sort of locomotive- 
ness ; they move a side at a time, and man, by his machinery, 
is meeting the horse and the ox half-way. Whatever part 
the whip has touched is thenceforth palsied. Who would 
ever think of a side of any of the supple cat tribe, as we 
speak of a side of beef? 

I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken before 
they can be made the slaves of men, and that men them- 
selves have some wild oats still left to sow before they be- 
come submissive members of society. Undoubtedly, all men 
are not equally fit subjects for civilization; and because the 
majority, like dogs and sheep, are tame by inherited dis- 
position, this is no reason why the others should have their 
natures broken that they may be reduced to the same level. 
Men are in the main alike, but they were made several in 
order that they might be various. If a low use is to be 
served, one man will do nearly or quite as well as another ; 
if a high one, individual excellence is to be regarded. Any 



Walking 155 

man can stop a hole to keep the wind away, but no other 
man could serve so rare a use as the author of this illustra- 
tion did. Confucius says, — " The skins of the tiger and the 
leopard, when they are tanned, are as the skins of the dog 
and the sheep tanned." But it is not the part of a true 
culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep 
ferocious ; and tanning their skins for shoes is not the best 
use to which they can be put. 

When looking over a list of men's names in a foreign 
language, as of military officers, or of authors who have 
written on a particular subject, I am reminded once more 
that there is nothing in a name. The name Menschikofif, 
for instance, has nothing in it to my ears more human than 
a whisker, and it may belong to a rat. As the names of the 
Poles and Russians are to us, so are ours to them. It is as 
if they had been named by the child's rigmarole, — levy 
wiery ichery van, tittle -tol-t an. I see in my mind a herd 
of wild creatures swarming over the earth, and to each the 
herdsman has affixed some barbarous sound in his own 
dialect. The names of men are of course as cheap and 
meaningless as Bose and Tray, the names of dogs. 

Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy, 
if men were named merely in the gross, as they are known. 
It would be necessary only to know the genus and perhaps 
the race or variety, to know the individual. We are not 
prepared to believe that every private soldier in a Roman 
army had a name of his own, — because we have not supposed 
that he had a character of his own. At present our only 
true names are nicknames. I knew a boy who, from his 
peculiar energy, was called '' Buster " by, his playmates, 
and this rightly supplanted his Christian name. Some 
travelers tell us that an Indian had no name given him at 
first, but earned it, and his name was his fame ; and among 



156 American Essays 

some tribes he acquired a new name with every new 
exploit. It is pitiful when a man bears a name for 
convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor 
Tame. 

I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for me, 
but still see men in herds for all them. A familiar name 
cannot make a man less strange to me. It may be given 
to a savage who retains in secret his own wild title earned 
in the woods. We have a wild savage in us, and a savage 
name is perchance somewhere recorded as ours. I see that 
my neighbor, who bears the familiar epithet William, or 
Edwin, takes it off with his jacket. It does not adhere to 
him when asleep or in anger, or aroused by any passion 
or inspiration. I seem to hear pronounced by some of his 
kin at such a time his original wild name in seme jaw- 
breaking or else melodious tongue. 

Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours. Nature, 
lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for 
her children, as the leopard ; and yet we are so early weaned 
from her breast to society, to that culture which is ex- 
clusively an interaction of man on man, — a sort of breeding 
in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, 
a civilization destined to have a speedy limit. 

In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to 
detect a certain precocity. When we should still be grow- 
ing children, we are already little men. Give me a culture 
which imports much muck from the meadows, and deepens 
the soil, — not that which trusts to heating manures, and 
improved implements and modes of culture only ! 

Many a poor, sore-eyed student that I have heard of 
would grow faster, both intellectually and physically, if, 
instead of sitting up so very late, he honestly slumbered a 
fool's allowance. 



Walking 157 

There may be an excess even of informing light. Niepce, 
a Frenchman, discovered '* actinism," that power in the 
sun's rays which produces a chemical effect, — that granite 
rocks, and stone structures, and statues of metal, '' are all 
alike destructively acted upon during the hours of sunshine, 
and, but for provisions of Nature no less wonderful, would 
soon perish under the delicate touch of the most subtile 
of the agencies of the universe." But he observed that 
" those bodies which underwent this change during the day- 
light possessed the power of restoring themselves to their 
original conditions during the hours of night, when this 
excitement was no longer influencing them." Hence it has 
been inferred that '' the hours of darkness are as necessary 
to the inorganic creation as we know night and sleep are 
to the organic kingdom." Not even does the moon shine 
every night, but gives place to darkness. 

I would not have every man nor eyery part of a man culti- 
vated, any more than I would have every acre of earth 
cultivated : part will be tillage, but the greater part will be 
meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use, but 
preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual 
decay of the vegetation which it supports. 

There are other letters for the child to learn than those 
which Cadmus invented. The Spaniards have a good term 
to express this wild and dusky knowledge — Gramdtica parda, 
tawny grammar, — a kind of mother-wit derived from that 
same leopard to which I have referred. 

We have heard of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful 
Knowledge. It is said that knowledge is power; and the 
like. Methinks there is equal need of a Society for the 
Diffusion of Useful Ignorance, what we will call Beautiful 
Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a higher sense : for what 
is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit 
that we know something, which robs us of the advantage 



158 American Essays 

of our actual ignorance ? What we call knowledge is often 
our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge. 
B}^ long years of patient industry and reading of the news- 
papers, — for what are the libraries of science but files of 
newspapers ? — a man accumulates a myriad facts, lays them 
up in his memory, and then when in some spring of his life 
he saunters abroad into the Great Fields of thought, he, as 
it were, goes to grass like a horse, and leaves all his harness 
behind in the stable. I would say to the Society for the 
Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, sometimes, — Go to grass. 
You have eaten hay long enough. The spring has come 
with its green crop. The very cows are driven to their 
country pastures before the end of May; though I have 
heard of one unnatural farmer who kept his cow in the 
barn and fed her on hay all the year round. So, frequently, 
the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge treats 
its cattle. 

A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but 
beautiful, — while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes 
worse than useless, besides being ugly. Which is the best 
man to deal with, — he who knows nothing about a subject, 
and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, 
or he who really knows something about it, but thinks that 
he knows all? 

My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire 
to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is 
perennial and constant. The highest that we can attain to 
is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do 
not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything 
more definite than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden 
revelation of the insufficiency of all that we called Knowl- 
edge before, — a discovery that there are more things in 
heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. 
It is the lighting up of the mist by the sun. Man cannot 



Walking 159 

know in any higher sense than this, any more than he can 
look serenely and with impunity in the face of sun : '12? tI 
vo(x>v, ov Kdvov i/o>}o-€ts, — " You wiU not perceive that, as per- 
ceiving a particular thing," say the Chaldean Oracles. 

There is something servile in the habit of seeking after 
a law which we may obey. We may study the laws of 
matter at and for our convenience, but a successful life 
knows no law. It is an unfortunate discovery certainly, 
that of a law which binds us where we did not know before 
that we were bound. Live free, child of the mist, — and 
with respect to knowledge we are all children of the mist. 
The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all 
the laws, by virtue of his relation to the law-maker. " That 
is active duty," says the Vishnu Purana, " which is not for 
our bondage ; that is knowledge which is for our liberation : 
all other duty is good only unto weariness ; all other knowl- 
edge is only the cleverness of an artist." 

It is remarkable how few events or crises there are in 
our histories ; how little exercised we have been in our 
minds; how few experiences we have had. I would fain 
be assured that I am growing apace and rankly, though my 
very growth disturb this dull equanimity, — though it be 
with struggle through long, dark, muggy nights or seasons 
of gloom. It would be well, if all our lives were a divine 
tragedy even, instead of this trivial comedy or farce. Dante, 
Bunyan, and others, appear to have been exercised in their 
minds more than we: they were subjected to a kind of 
culture such as our district schools and colleges do not 
contemplate. Even Mahomet, though many may scream 
at his name, had a good deal more to live for, ay, and to 
die for, than they have commonly. 

When, at rare intervals, some thought visits one, as per- 
chance he is walking on a railroad, then indeed the cars 



i6o American Essays 

go by without his hearing them. But soon, by some in- 
exorable law, our life goes by and the cars return. 

" Gentle breeze, that wanderest unseen, 
And bendest the thistles round Loira of storms, 
Traveler of the windy glens. 
Why hast thou left my ear so soon?" 

While almost all men feel an attraction drawing them 
to society, few are attracted strongly to Nature. In their 
relation to Nature men appear to me for the most part, 
notwithstanding their arts, lower than the animals. It is 
not often a beautiful relation, as in the case of the animals. 
How little appreciation of the beauty of the landscape there 
is among us ! We have to be told that the Greeks called 
the world Koo-/xo?, Beauty, or Order, but we do not see 
clearly why they did so, and we esteem it at best only a 
curious philological fact. 

For my part, I feel that with regard to Nature I live a 
sort of border life, on the confines of a world into which 
I make occasional and transional and transient forays only, 
and my patriotism and allegiance to the State into whose 
territories I seem to retreat are those of a moss-trooper. 
Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow 
even a will-o'-the-wisp through bogs and sloughs unimag- 
inable, but no moon nor firefly has shown me the causeway 
to it. Nature is a personality so vast and universal that we 
have never seen one of her features. The walker in the 
familiar fields which stretch around my native town some- 
times finds himself in another land than is described in 
their owners' deeds, as it were in some far-away field on 
the confines of the actual Concord, where her jurisdiction 
ceases, and the idea which the word Concord suggests ceases 
to be suggested. These farms which I have myself sur- 
veyed, these bounds which I have set up, appear dimly still 



Walking i6i 

as through a mist ; but they have no chemistry to fix them ; 
they fade from the surface of the glass; and the picture 
which the painter painted stands out dimly from beneath. 
The world with which we are commonly acquainted leaves 
no trace, and it will have no anniversary. 

I took a walk on Spaulding's Farm the other afternoon. 
I saw the setting sun lighting up the opposite side of a 
stately pine wood. Its golden rays straggled into the aisles 
of the wood as into some noble hall. I was impressed as 
if some ancient and altogether admirable and shining family 
had settled there in that part of the land called Concord, 
unknown to me, — to whom the sun was servant, — who had 
not gone into society in the village, — who had not been 
called on. I saw their park, their pleasure-ground, beyond 
through the wood, in Spaulding's cranberry-meadow. The 
pines furnished them with gables as they grew. Their 
house was not obvious to vision; the trees grew through 
it. I do not know whether I heard the sounds of a sup- 
pressed hilarity or not. They seemed to recline on the 
sunbeams. They have sons and daughters. They are quite 
well. The farmer's cart-path, which leads directly through 
their hall, does not in the least put them out, — as the muddy 
bottom of a pool is sometimes seen through the reflected 
skies. They never heard of Spaulding, and do not know 
that he is their neighbor, — notwithstanding I heard him 
whistle as he drove his team through the house. Nothing 
can equal the serenity of their lives. Their coat of arms 
is simply a lichen. I saw it painted on the pines and oaks. 
Their attics were in the tops of the trees„ They are of no 
politics. There was no noise of labor. I did not perceive 
that they were weaving or spinning. Yet I did detect, 
when the wind lulled and hearing was done away, the finest 
imaginable sweet musical hum, — as of a distant hive in 
May, which perchance was the sound of their thinking. 



1 62 American Essays 

They had no idle thoughts, and no one without could see 
their work, for their industry was not as in knots and ex- 
crescences embayed. 

But I find it difficult to remember them. They fade 
irrevocably out of my mind even now while I speak and 
endeavor to recall them, and recollect myself. It is only 
after a long and serious effort to recollect my best thoughts 
that I become again aware of their cohabitancy. If it were 
not for such families as this, I think I should move out of 
Concord. 

We are accustomed to say in New England that few and 
fewer pigeons visit us every year. Our forests furnish no 
mast for them. So, it would seem, few and fewer thoughts 
visit each growing man from year to year, for the grove 
in our minds is laid waste, — sold to feed unnecessary fires 
of ambition, or sent to mill, and there is scarcely a twig left 
for them to perch on. They no longer build nor breed with 
us. In some more genial season, perchance, a faint shadow 
flits across the landscape of the mind, cast by the wings 
of some thought in its vernal or autumnal migration, but, 
looking up, we are unable to detect the substance of the 
thought itself. Our winged thoughts are turned to poultry. 
They no longer soar, and they attain only to a Shanghai 
and Cochin-China grandeur. Those gra-a-ate thoughts, those 
gra-a-ate men you hear of ! 

We hug the earth, — how rarely we mount ! Methinks we 
might elevate ourselves a little more. We might climb a 
tree, at least. I found my account in climbing a tree once. 
It was a tall white pine, on the top of a hill ; and though 
I got well pitched, I was well paid for it, for I discovered 
new mountains in the horizon which I had never seen before, 
— so much more of the earth and the heavens. I might have 
walked about the foot of the tree for threescore years and 



Walking 163 

ten, and yet I certainly should never have seen them. But, 
above all, I discovered around me, — it was near the end of 
June, — on the ends of the topmost branches only, a few 
minute and delicate red cone-like blossoms, the fertile flower 
of the white pine looking heavenward. I carried straight- 
way to the village the topmost spire, and showed it to 
stranger jurymen who walked the streets, — for it was court- 
week, — and to farmers and lumber-dealers and wood- 
choppers and hunters, and not one had ever seen the like 
before, but they wondered as at a star dropped down. Tell 
of ancient architects finishing their works on the tops of 
columns as perfectly as on the lower and more visible parts ! 
Nature has from the first expanded the minute blossoms 
of the forest only toward the heavens, above men's heads 
and unobserved by them. We see only the flowers that 
are under our feet in the meadows. The pines have de- 
veloped their delicate blossoms on the highest twigs of the 
wood every summer for ages, as well over the heads of 
Nature's red children as of her white ones; yet scarcely a 
farmer or hunter in the land has ever seen them. 

Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. 
He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of 
the passing life in remembering the past. Unless our phi- 
losophy hears the cock crow in every barn-yard within our 
horizon, it is belated. That sound commonly reminds us 
that we are growing rusty and antique in our employments 
and habits of thought. His philosophy comes down to a 
more recent time than ours. There is something suggested 
by it that is a newer testament, — the gospel according to 
this moment. He has not fallen astern ; he has got up early, 
and kept up early, and to be where he is to be in season, 
in the foremost rank of time. It is an expression of the 
health and soundness of Nature, a brag for all the world, — 



164 American Essays 

healthiness as of a spring burst forth, a new fountain of 
the Muses, to celebrate this last instant of time. Where 
he lives no fugitive slave laws are passed. Who has not 
betrayed his master many times since last he heard that 
note? 

The merit of this bird's strain is in its freedom from all 
plaintiveness. The singer can easily move us to tears or 
to laughter, but where is he who can excite in us a pure 
morning joy? When, in doleful dumps, breaking the awful 
stillness of our wooden sidewalk on a Sunday, or, per- 
chance, a watcher in the house of mourning, I hear a cock- 
erel crow far or near, I think to myself, '' There is one of 
us well, at any rate," — and with a sudden gush return to 
my senses. 

We had a remarkable sunset one day last November. I 
was walking in a meadow, the source of a small brook, 
when the sun at last, just before setting, after a cold gray 
day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon, and the softest, 
brightest morning sunlight fell on the dry grass and on the 
stems of the trees in the opposite horizon, and on the leaves 
of the shrub-oaks on the hill-side, while our shadows 
stretched long over the meadow eastward, as if we were 
the only motes in its beams. It was such a light as we 
could not have imagined a moment before, and the air 
also was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting 
to make a paradise of that meadow. When we reflected 
that this was not a solitary phenomenon, never to happen 
again, but that it would happen forever and ever an infinite 
number of evenings, and cheer and reassure the latest child 
that walked there, it was more glorious still. 

The sun sets on some retired meadow, where no house 
is visible, with all the glory and splendor that it lavishes 
on cities, and perchance, as it has never set before, — where 



Walking 165 

there is but a solitary marsh-hawk to have his wings gilded 
by it, or only a musquash looks out from his cabin, and 
there is some little black-veined brook in the midst of the 
marsh, just beginning to meander, winding slowly round 
a d-ecaying stump. We walked in so pure and bright a 
light, gilding the withered grass and leaves, so softly and 
serenely bright, I thought I had never bathed in such a 
golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it. The 
west side of every wood and rising ground gleamed like 
the boundary of Elysium, and the sun on our backs seemed 
like a gentle herdsman driving us home at evening. 

So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the 
sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall 
perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our 
whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and 
serene and golden as on a bank-side in autumn. 



ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN 
FOREIGNERS ^ 

James Russell Lowell 

Walking one day toward the Village, as we used to call 
it in the good old days when almost every dweller in the 
town had been born in it, I was enjoying that delicious sense 
of disenthralment from the actual which the deepening 
twilight brings with it, giving as it does a sort of obscure 
novelty to things familiar. The coolness, the hush, broken 
only by the distant bleat of some belated goat, querulous to 
be disburdened of her milky load, the few faint stars, more 
guessed as yet than seen,. the sense that the coming daTk 
would so soon fold me in the secure privacy of its disguise, 
—all things combined in a result as near absolute peace 
as can be hoped for by a man who knows that there is a 
writ out against him in the hands of the printer's devil. 
For the moment, I was enjoying the blessed privilege of 
thinking without being called on to stand and deliver what 
I thought to the small pubhc who are good enough to take 
any interest therein. I love old ways, and the path I was 
walking felt kindly to the feet it had known for almost fifty 
years. How many fleeting impressions it had shared with 
me ! How many times I had lingered to study the shadows 
of the leaves mezzotinted upon the turf that edged it by 
the moon, of the bare boughs etched with a touch beyond 
Rembrandt by the same unconscious artist on the smooth 
page of snow! If I turned round, through dusky tree-gaps 

* From the Atlantic Monthly, January, 1869. 
166 



On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners 167 

came the first twinkle of evening lamps in the dear old 
homestead. On Corey's hill I could see these tiny pharoses 
of love and home and sweet domestic thoughts flash out one 
by one across the blackening salt-meadow between. How 
much has not kerosene added to the cheerfulness of our 
evening landscape ! A pair of night-herons flapped heavily 
over me toward the hidden river. The war was ended. 
I might walk townward without that aching dread of bulle- 
tins that had darkened the July sunshine and twice made the 
scarlet leaves of October seem stained with blood. I re- 
membered with a pang, half-proud, half-painful, how, so 
many years ago, I had walked over the same path and felt 
round my finger the soft pressure of a little hand that was 
one day to harden with faithful grip of saber. On how 
many paths, leading to how many homes where proud 
Memory does all she can to fill up the fireside gaps with 
shining shapes, must not men be walking in just such 
pensive mood as I? Ah, young heroes, safe in immortal 
youth as those of Homer, you at least carried your ideal 
hence untarnished ! It is locked for you beyond moth or rust 
in the treasure-chamber of Death. 

Is not a country, I thought, that has had such as they 
in it, that could give such as they a brave joy in dying 
for it, worth something, then? And as I felt more and 
more the soothing magic of evening's cool palm upon my 
temples, as my fancy came home from its revery, and my 
senses, with reawakened curiosity, ran to the front win- 
dows again from the viewless closet of abstraction, and felt 
a strange charm in finding the old tree and shabby fence 
still there under the travesty of falling night, nay, were 
conscious of an unsuspected newness in familiar stars and 
the fading outlines of hills my earliest horizon, I was con- 
scious of an immortal soul, and could not but rejoice in the 
unwaning goodliness of the world into which I had been 



i68 American Essays 

born without any merit of my own. I thought of dear 
Henry Vaughan's rainbow, '' Still young and fine ! " I re- 
membered people who had to go over to the Alps to learn 
what the divine silence of snow was, who must run to Italy 
before they were conscious of the miracle wrought every 
day under their very noses by the sunset, who must call 
upon the Berkshire hills to teach them what a painter 
autumn was, while close at hand the Fresh Pond meadows 
made all oriels cheap with hues that showed as if a sunset- 
cloud had been wrecked among their maples. One might 
be worse off than even in America, I thought. There are 
some things so elastic that even the heavy roller of democ- 
racy cannot flatten them altogether down. The mind can 
weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts and 
dwell a hermit anywhere. A country without traditions, 
without ennobUng associations, a scramble of parvenus, with 
a horrible consciousness of shoddy running through politics, 
manners, art, literature, nay, religion itself? I confess, it 
did not seem so to me there in that illimitable quiet, that 
serene self-possession of nature, where Collins might have 
brooded his " Ode to Evening," or where those verses on 
Solitude in Dodsley's Collection, that Hawthorne liked so 
much, might have been composed. Traditions? Granting 
that we had none, all that is worth having in them is the 
common property of the soul, — an estate in gavelkind for 
all the sons of Adam, — and, moreover, if a man cannot stand 
on his two feet (the prime quality of whoever has left any 
tradition behind him), were it not better for him to be 
honest about it at once, and go down on all fours? And 
for associations, if one have not the wit to make them for 
himself out of native earth, no ready-made ones of other 
men will avail much. Lexington is none the worse to me 
for not being in Greece, nor Gettysburg that its name is 
not Marathon. '' Blessed old fields," I was just exclaiming 



On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners 169 

to myself, like one of Mrs. Radcliffe's heroes, " dear acres, 
innocently secure from history, which these eyes first be- 
held, may you be also those to which they shall at last slowly 
darken ! " when I was interrupted by a voice which asked 
me in German whether I was the Herr Professor, Doctor, 
So-and-so ? The '' Doctor " was by brevet or vaticination, 
to make the grade easier to my pocket. 

One feels so intimately assured that he is made up, in 
part, of shreds and leavings of the past, in part of the 
interpolations of other people, that an honest man would 
be slow in saying yes to such a question. But " my name is 
So-and-so " is a safe answer, and I gave it. While I had 
been romancing with myself, the street-lamps had been 
lighted, and it was under one of these detectives that have 
robbed the Old Road of its privilege of sanctuary after 
nightfall that I was ambushed by my foe. The inexorable 
villain had taken my description, it appears, that I might 
have the less chance to escape him. Dr. Holmes tells us 
that we change our substance, not every seven years, as 
was once believed, but with every breath we draw. Why 
had I not the wit to avail myself of the subterfuge, and, 
like Peter, to renounce my identity, especially, as in certain 
moods of mind, I have often more than doubted of it my- 
self? When a man is, as it were, his own front-door, and 
is thus knocked at, why may he not assume the right of 
that sacred wood to make every house a castle, by denying 
himself to all visitations? I was truly not at home when 
the question was put to me, but had to recall myself from 
all out-of-doors, and to piece my self-consciousness hastily 
together as well as I could before I answered it. 

I knew perfectly well what was coming. It is seldom 
that debtors or good Samaritans waylay people under gas- 
lamps in order to force money upon them, so far as I have 
seen or heard. I was also aware, from considerable experi- 



170 American Essays 

ence, that every foreigner is persuaded that, by doing this 
country the favor of coming to it, he has laid every native 
thereof under an obHgation, pecuniary or other, as the case 
may be, whose discharge he is entitled to on demand duly 
made in person or by letter. Too much learning (of this 
kind) had made me mad in the provincial sense of the 
word. I had begun life with the theory of giving something 
to every beggar that came along, though sure of never find- 
ing a native-born countryman among them. In a small 
way, I was resolved to emulate Hatem Tai's tent, with its 
three hundred and sixty-five entrances, one for every day 
in the year, — I know not whether he was astronomer enough 
to add another for leap-years. The beggars were a kind of* 
German-silver aristocracy; not real plate, to be sure, but 
better than nothing: Where everybody was overworked, 
they supplied the comfortable equipoise of absolute leisure, 
so aesthetically needful. Besides, I was but too conscious 
of a vagrant fiber in myself, which too often thrilled me in 
my solitary walks with the temptation to wander on into 
infinite space, and by a single spasm of resolution to eman- 
cipate myself from the drudgery of prosaic serfdom to 
respectability and the regular course of things. This 
prompting has been at times my familiar demon, and I 
could not but feel a kind of respectful sympathy for men 
who had dared what I had only sketched out to myself as 
a splendid possibility. For seven years I helped maintain 
one heroic man on an imaginary journey to Portland, — 
as fine an example as I have ever known of hopeless loyalty 
to an ideal. I assisted another so long in a fruitless attempt 
to reach Mecklenburg-Schwerin, that at last we grinned 
in each other's faces when we met, like a couple of augurs. 
He was possessed by this harmless mania as some are by 
the North Pole, and I shall never forget his look of regretful 
compassion (as for one who was sacrificing his higher life 



On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners 171 

to the fleshpots of Egypt) when I at last advised him some- 
what strenuously to go to the D , whither the road was 

so much traveled that he could not miss it. General Banks, 
in his noble zeal for the honor of his country, would confer 
on the Secretary of State the power of imprisoning, in case 
of war, all these seekers of the unattainable, thus by a 
stroke of the pen annihilating the single poetic element in 
our humdrum life. Alas ! not everybody has the genius 
to be a Bobbin-Boy, or doubtless all these also would have 
chosen that more prosperous line of life! But moralists, 
sociologists, political economists, and taxes have slowly con- 
vinced me that my beggarly sympathies were a sin against 
society. Especially was the Buckle doctrine of averages (so 
flattering to our free-will) persuasive with me; for as there 
must be in every year a certain number who would bestow 
an alms on these abridged editions of the Wandering Jew, 
the withdrawal of my quota could make no possible differ- 
ence, since some destined proxy must always step forward 
to fill my gap. Just so many misdirected letters every year 
and no more ! Would it were as easy to reckon up the 
number of men on whose backs fate has written the wrong 
address, so that they arrive by mistake in Congress and 
other places where they do not belong! May not these 
wanderers of whom I speak have been sent into the world 
without any proper address at all? Where is our Dead- 
Letter Office for such? And if wiser social arrangements 
should furnish us with something of the sort, fancy (hor- 
rible thought!) how many a workingman's friend (a kind 
of industry in which the labor is light and the wages heavy) 
would be sent thither because not called for in the office 
where he at present lies ! 

But I am leaving my new acquaintance too long under 
the lamp-post. The same Gano which had betrayed me 
to him reyealed to me a well-set young man of about half 



172 American Essays 

my own age, as well dressed, so far as I could see, as I 
was, and with every natural qualification for getting his 
own livelihood as good, if not better, than my own. He had 
been reduced to the painful necessity of calling upon me 
by a series of crosses beginning with the Baden Revolution 
(for which, I own, he seemed rather young, — but perhaps 
he referred to a kind of revolution practiced every season 
at Baden-Baden), continued by repeated failures in busi- 
ness, for amounts which must convince me of his entire 
respectability, and ending with our Civil War. During the 
latter, he had served with distinction as a soldier, taking a 
main part in every important battle, with a rapid list of 
which he favored me, and no doubt would have admitted 
that, impartial as Jonathan Wild's great ancestor, he had 
been on both sides, had I baited him with a few hints of 
conservative opinions on a subject so distressing to a gen- 
tleman wishing to profit by one's sympathy and unhappily 
doubtful as to which way it might lean. For all these rea- 
sons, and, as he seemed to imply, for his merit in consenting 
to be born in Germany, he considered himself my natural 
creditor to the extent of five dollars, which he would hand- 
somely consent to accept in greenbacks, though he preferred 
specie. The ofTer was certainly a generous one, and the 
claim presented with an assurance that carried conviction. 
But, unhappily, I had been led to remark a curious natural 
phenomenon. If I was ever weak enough to give anything 
to a petitioner of whatever nationality, it always rained 
decayed compatriots of his for a month after. Post hoc 
ergo propter hoc may not always be safe logic, but here I 
seemed to perceive a natural connection of cause and effect. 
Now, a few days before I had been so tickled with a paper 
(professedly written by a benevolent American clergyman) 
certifying that the bearer, a hard-working German, had 
long '' sofered with rheumatic paints in his limps," that, 



On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners 173 

after copying the passage into my note-book, I thought it 
but fair to pay a trifling honorarium to the author. I had 
pulled the string of the shower-bath ! It had been running 
shipwrecked sailors for some time, but forthwith it began 
to pour Teutons, redolent of lager-bier. I could not help 
associating the apparition of my new friend with this series 
of otherwise unaccountable phenomena. I accordingly made 
up my mind to deny the debt, and modestly did so, plead- 
ing a native bias towards impecuniosity to the full as strong 
as his own. He took a high tone with me at once, such as 
an honest man would naturally take with a confessed re- 
pudiator. He even brought down his proud stomach so far 
as to join himself to me for the rest of my townward walk, 
that he might give me his views of the American people, 
and thus inclusively of myself. 

I know not whether it is because I am pigeon-livered 
and lack gall, or whether it is from an overmastering sense 
of drollery, but I am apt to submit to such bastings with 
a patience which afterwards surprises me, being not with- 
out my share of warmth in the blood. Perhaps it is be- 
cause I so often meet with young persons who know vastly 
more than I do, and especially with so many foreigners 
whose knowledge of this country is superior to my own. 
However it may be, I listened for some time with tolerable 
composure as my self-appointed lecturer gave me in detail 
his opinions of my country and its people. America, he 
informed me, was without arts, science, literature, culture, 
or any native hope of supplying them. We were a people 
wholly given to money-getting, and who, having got it, knew 
no other use for it than to hold it fast. I am fain to confess 
that I felt a sensible itching of the biceps, and that my fingers 
closed with such a grip as he had just informed me was one 
of the effects of our unhappy climate. But happening just 
then to be where I could avoid temptation by dodging down 



174 American Essays 

a by-street, I hastily left him to finish his diatribe to the 
lamp-post, which could stand it better than I. That young 
man will never know how near he came to being assaulted 
by a respectable gentleman of middle age, at the corner 
of Church Street. I have never felt quite satisfied that I 
did all my duty by him in not knocking him down. But 
perhaps he might have knocked me down, and then? 

The capacity of indignation makes an essential part of 
the outfit of every honest man, but I am inclined to doubt 
whether he is a wise one who allows himself to act upon 
its first hints. It should be rather, I suspect, a latent heat 
in the blood, which makes itself felt in character, a steady 
reserve for the brain, warming the ovum of thought to life, 
rather than cooking it by a too hasty enthusiasm in reaching 
the boiling-point. As my pulse gradually fell back to its 
normal beat, I reflected that I had been uncomfortably near 
making a fool of myself, — a handy salve of euphuism for 
our vanity, though it does not always make a just allowance 
to Nature for her share in the business. What possible 
claim had my Teutonic friend to rob me of my composure ? 
I am not, I think, specially thin-skinned as to other people's 
opinions of myself, having, as I conceive, later and fuller 
intelligence on that point than anybody else can give me. 
Life is continually weighing us in very sensitive scales, and 
telling every one of us precisely what his real weight is 
to the last grain of dust. Whoever at fifty does not rate 
himself quite as low as most of his acquaintance would be 
hkely to put him, must be either a fool or a great man, and 
I humbly disclaim being either. But if I was not smarting 
in person from any scattering shot of my late companion's 
commination, why should I grow hot at any implication of 
my country therein? Surely her shoulders are broad 
enough, if yours or mine are not, to bear up under a con- 



On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners 175 

siderable avalanche of this kind. It is the bit of truth in 
every slander, the hint of likeness in every caricature, that 
makes us smart. ''Art thou there, old Truepenny? " How 
did your blade know its way so well to that one loose rivet 
in our armor? I wondered whether Americans were over- 
sensitive in this respect, whether they were more touchy 
than other folks. On the whole, I thought we were not. 
Plutarch, who at least had studied philosophy, if he had 
not mastered it, could not stomach something Herodotus 
had said of Boeotia, and devoted an essay to showing up 
the delightful old traveler's malice and ill-breeding. French 
editors leave out of Montaigne's " Travels " some remarks 
of his about France, for reasons best known to themselves. 
Pachydermatous Deutschland, covered with trophies from 
every field of letters, still winces under that question which 
Pere Bouhours put two centuries ago, Si un Allemand pent 
ctre hel-esprit? John Bull grew apoplectic with angry amaze- 
ment at the audacious persiflage of Piickler-Muskau. To be 
sure, he was a prince, — but that was not all of it, for a 
chance phrase of gentle Hawthorne sent a spasm through 
all the journals of England. Then this tenderness is not 
peculiar to usf Console yourself, dear man and brother, 
whatever else you may be sure of, be sure at least of this, 
that you are dreadfully like other people. Human nature 
has a much greater genius for sameness than for originality, 
or the world would be at a sad pass shortly. The surprising 
thing is that men have such a taste for this somewhat musty 
flavor, that an Englishman, for example, should feel himself 
defrauded, nay, even outraged, when he comes over here 
and finds a people speaking what he admits to be something 
like English, and yet so very different from (or, as he 
would say, to) those he left at home. Nothing, I am sure, 
equals my thankfulness when I meet an Englishman who is 



176 . American Essays 

not like every other, or, I may add, an American of the 
same odd turn. 

Certainly it is no shame to a man that he should be as 
nice about his country as about his sweetheart, and who 
ever heard even the friendliest appreciation of that unex- 
pressive she that did not seem to fall infinitely short? Yet 
it would hardly be wise to hold everyone an enemy who 
could not see her with our own enchanted eyes. It seems 
to be the common opinion of foreigners that Americans are 
too tender upon this point. Perhaps we are; and if so, 
there must be a reason for it. Have we had fair play? 
Could the eyes of what is called Good Society (though it 
is so seldom true either to the adjective or noun) look upon 
a nation of dernocrats with any chance of receiving an un- 
distorted image? Were not those, moreover, who found 
in the old order of things an earthly paradise, paying them 
quarterly dividends for the wisdom of their ancestors, with 
the punctuality of the seasons, unconsciously bribed to mis- 
understand if not to misrepresent us? Whether at war or 
at peace, there we were, a standing menace to all earthly 
paradises of that kind, fatal underminers of the very credit 
on which the dividends were based, all the more hateful and 
terrible that our destructive agency was so insidious, work- 
ing invisible in the elements, as it seemed, active while they 
slept, and coming upon them in the darkness like an armed 
man. Could Laius have the proper feelings of a father 
towards CEdipus, announced as his destined destroyer by 
infallible oracles, and felt to be such by every conscious 
fiber of his soul ? For more than a century the Dutch were 
the laughing-stock of polite Europe. They were butter- 
firkins, swillers of beer and schnaps, and their vrouws from 
whom Holbein painted the ail-but loveliest of Madonnas, 
Rembrandt the graceful girl who sits immortal on his knee 
in Dresden, and Rubens his abounding goddesses, were the 



On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners 177 

synonymes of clumsy vulgarity. Even so late as Irving the 
ships of the greatest navigators in the world were repre- 
sented as sailing equally well stern-foremost. That the 
aristocratic Venetians should have 

*' Riveted with gigantic piles 
Thorough the center their new-catched miles," 

was heroic. But the far more marvelous achievement of 
the Dutch in the same kind was ludicrous even to republican 
Marvell. Meanwhile, during that very century of scorn, 
they were the best artists, sailors, merchants, bankersy 
printers, scholars, jurisconsults, and statesmen in Europe, 
and the genius of Motley has revealed them to us, earning 
a right to themselves by the most heroic struggle in human 
annals. But, alas ! they were not merely simple burghers 
who had fairly made themselves High Mightinesses, and 
could treat on equal terms with anointed kings, but their 
commonwealth carried in its bosom the germs of democracy. 
They even unmuzzled, at least after dark, that dreadful 
mastiff, the Press, whose scent is, or ought to be, so keen 
for wolves in sheep's clothing and for certain other animals 
in lions' skins. They made fun of Sacred Majesty, and, 
what was worse, managed uncommonly well without it. In 
an age when periwigs made so large a part of the natural 
dignity of man, people with such a turn of mind were dan- 
gerous. How could they seem other than vulgar and 
hateful ? 

In the natural course of things we succeeded to this 
unenviable position of general butt. The Dutch had thriven 
under it pretty well, and there was hope that we could 
at least contrive to worry along. And we certainly did in 
a very redoubtable fashion. Perhaps we deserved some 
of the sarcasm more than our Dutch predecessors in office. 
We had nothing. to boast of in arts or letters, and were given 



178 American Essays 

to bragging overmuch of our merely material prosperity, 
due quite as much to the virtue of our continent as to our 
own. There was some truth in Carlyle's sneer, after all. 
Till we had succeeded in some higher way than this, we 
had only the success of physical growth. Our greatness, 
like that of enormous Russia, was greatness on the map, — 
barbarian mass only ; but had we gone down, like that other 
Atlantis, in some vast cataclysm, we should have covered 
but a pin's point on the chart of memory, compared with 
those ideal spaces occupied by tiny Attica and cramped Eng- 
land. At the same time, our critics somewhat too easily 
forgot that material must make ready the foundation for 
ideal triumphs, that the arts have no chance in poor coun- 
tries. And it must be allowed that democracy stood for a 
great deal in our shortcoming. The Edinburgh Review 
never would have thought of asking, '' Who reads a Rus- 
sian book ? " and England was satisfied with iron from 
Sweden without being impertinently inquisitive after her 
painters and statuaries. Was it that they expected too much 
from the mere miracle of Freedom? Is it not the highest 
art of a Republic to make men of flesh and blood, and not 
the marble ideals of such ? It may be fairly doubted 
whether we have produced this higher type of man yet. 
Perhaps it is the collective, not the individual, humanity 
that is to have a chance of nobler development among us. 
We shall see. We have a vast amount of imported ignorance, 
and, still w^orse, of native ready-made knowledge, to digest 
before even the preliminaries of such a consummation can 
be arranged. We have got to learn that statesmanship is 
the most complicated of all arts, and to come back to the 
apprenticeship-system too hastily abandoned. At present, 
we trust a man with making constitutions on less proof of 
competence than we should demand before we gave him our 
shoe to patch. We have nearly reached the limit of the 



On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners 179 

reaction from the old notion, which paid too mucli regard 
to birth and station as quahfications for office, and have 
touched the extreme point in the opposite direction, putting 
the highest of human functions up at auction to be bid for 
by any creature capable of going upright on two legs. In 
some places, we have arrived at a point at which civil society 
is no longer possible, and already another reaction has be- 
gun, not backwards to the old system, but towards fitness 
either from natural aptitude or special training. But will 
it always be safe to let evils work their own cure by becom- 
ing unendurable ? Every one of them leaves its taint in the 
constitution of the body-politic, each in itself^ perhaps, 
trifling, but all together powerful for evil. 

But whatever we might do or leave undone, we were not 
genteel, and it was uncomfortable to be continually re- 
minded that, though we should boast that we were the 
Great West till we were black in the face^ it did not bring 
us an inch nearer to the world's West-End. That sacred 
inclosure of respectability was tabooed to us. The Holy 
Alliance did not inscribe us on its visiting-list. The Old 
World of wigs and orders and liveries would shop with 
us, but we must ring at the area-bell, and not venture to 
awaken the more august clamors of the knocker. Our man- 
ners, it must be granted, had none of those graces that stamp 
the caste of Vere de Vere, in whatever museum of British 
antiquities they may be hidden. In short, we were vulgar. 

This was one of those horribly vague accusations, the 
victim of which has no defense. An umbrella is of no avail 
against a Scotch mist. It envelops you, it penetrates at 
every pore, it wets you through without seeming to wet you 
at all. Vulgarity is an eighth deadly sin, added to the list 
in these latter days, and worse than all the others put 
together, since it perils your salvation in this world, — far 
the more important of the two in the minds of most men. 



i8o • American Essays 

It profits nothing to draw nice distinctions between essential 
and conventional, for the convention in this case is the 
essence, and you may break every command of the deca- 
logue with perfect good-breeding, nay, if you are adroit, 
without losing caste. We, indeed, had it not to lose, for we 
had never gained it. '" How am I vulgar? " asks the culprit, 
shudderingly. " Because thou art not like unto Us,'' 
answers Lucifer, Son of the Morning, and there is no more 
to be said. The god of this world may be a fallen angel, 
but he has us there! We were as clean, — so far as my 
observation goes, I think we were cleaner, morally and 
physically, than the English, and therefore, of course, than 
everybody else. But we did not pronounce the diphthong 
ou as they did, and we said eether and not eyther, following 
therein the fashion of our ancestors, who unhappily could 
bring over no English better than Shakespeare's ; and we 
did not stammer as they had learned to do from the cour- 
tiers, who in this way flattered the Hanoverian king, a 
foreigner among the people he had come to reign over. 
Worse than all, we might have the noblest ideas and the 
finest sentiments in the world, but we vented them through 
that organ by which men are led rather than leaders, though 
some physiologists would persuade us that Nature furnishes 
her captains with a fine handle to their faces that Oppor- 
tunity may get a good purchase on them for dragging them 
to the front. 

This state of things was so painful that excellent people 
were not wanting who gave their whole genius to repro- 
ducing here the original Bull, whether by gaiters, the cut of 
their whiskers, by a factitious brutality in their tone, or 
by an accent that was forever tripping and falling flat over 
the tangled roots of our common tongue. Martyrs to a 
false ideal, it never occurred to them that nothing is more 
hateful to gods and men than a second-rate Englishman, 



On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners i8i 

and for the very reason that this planet never produced a 
more splendid creature than the first-rate one, witness 
Shakespeare and the Indian Mutiny. If we could contrive 
to be not too unobtrusively our simple selves, we should be 
the most delightful of human beings, and the most original ; 
whereas, when the plating of Anglicism rubs off, as it always 
will in points that come to much wear, we are liable to very 
unpleasing conjectures about the quality of the metal under- 
neath. Perhaps one reason why the average Briton spreads 
himself here with such an easy air of superiority may be 
owing to the fact that he meets with so many bad imita- 
tions as to conclude himself the only real thing in a wilder- 
ness of shams. He fancies himself moving through an 
endless Bloomsbury, where his mere apparition confers 
honor as an avatar of the court-end of the universe. Not 
a Bull of them all but is persuaded he bears Europa upon 
his back. This is the sort of fellow whose patronage is so 
divertingly insufferable. Thank Heaven he is not the only 
specimen of cater-cousinship from the dear old Mother 
Island that is shown to us ! Among genuine things, I know 
nothing more genuine than the better men whose limbs 
were made in England. So manly-tender, so brave, so 
true, so warranted to wear, they make us proud to feel that 
blood is thicker thaii water. 

But it is not merely the Englishman; every European 
candidly admits in himself some right of primogeniture in 
respect of us, and pats this shaggy continent on the back 
with a lively sense of generous unbending. The German 
who plays the bass-viol has a well-founded contempt, which 
he is not always nice in concealing, for a country so few 
of whose children ever take that noble instrument between 
their knees. His cousin, the Ph.D. from Gottingen, cannot 
help despising a people who do not grow loud and red over 
Aryans and Turanians, and are indifferent about their de- 



1 82 American Essays 

scent from either. The Frenchman feels an easy mastery 
in speaking his mother tongue, and attributes it to some 
native superiority of parts that Hfts him higli above us 
barbarians of the West, The Itahan /rima donna sweeps 
a curtsy of careless pity to the over-facile pit which unsexes 
her with the bravo! innocently meant to show a familiarity 
with foreign usage. But all without exception make no 
secret of regarding us as the goose bound to deliver them 
a golden Qgg in return for their cackle. Such men as 
Agassiz, Guyot, and Goldwin Smith come with gifts in 
their hands ; but since it is commonly European failures 
who bring hither their remarkable gifts and acquirements, 
this view of the case is sometimes just the least bit in the 
world provoking. To think what a delicious seclusion of 
contempt we enjoyed till California and our own osten- 
tatious parvenus, flinging gold away in Europe that might 
have endowed libraries at home, gave us the ill repute of 
riches ! What a shabby downfall from the Arcadia which 
the French officers of our Revolutionary War fancied they 
saw here through Rousseau-tinted spectacles ! Something 
of Arcadia there really was, something of the Old Age ; and 
that divine provincialism were cheaply repurchased could 
we have it back again in exchange for the tawdry uphol- 
stery that has taken its place. 

For some reason or other, the European has rarely been 
able to see America except in caricature. Would the first 
Review of the world have printed the niaiseries of Mr. 
Maurice Sand as a picture of society in any civilized coun- 
try? Mr. Sand, to be sure, has inherited nothing of his 
famous mother's literary outfit, except the pseudonyme. 
But since the conductors of the Revue could not have pub- 
lished his story because it was clever, they must have thought 
it valuable for its truth. As true as the last-century Eng- 
lishman's picture of Jean Crapaud! We do not ask to be 



On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners 183 

sprinkled with rosewater, but may perhaps fairly - protest 
against being drenched with the rinsings of an unclean 
imagination. The next time the Revue allows such ill- 
bred persons to throw their slops out of its first-floor win- 
dows, let it honestly preface the discharge with a gardes- 
Veau! that we may run from under in season. And Mr. 
Duvergier d'Hauranne, who knows how to be entertaining ! 
I know >le Francais est plutot indiscret que confianf, and the 
pen slides too easily when indiscretions will fetch so much 
a page; but should we not have been tant-soit-peu more 
cautious had we been writing about people on the other 
side of the Channel? But then it is a fact in the natural 
history of the American long familiar to Europeans, that 
he abhors privacy, knows not the meaning of reserve, lives 
in hotels because of their greater publicity, and is never so 
pleased as when his domestic affairs (if he may be said 
to have any) are paraded in the newspapers. Barnum, it is 
well known, represents perfectly the average national senti- 
ment in this respect. However it be, we are not treated 
like other people, or perhaps I should say like people who 
are ever likely to be met with in society. 

Is it in the climate? Either I have a false notion of 
European manners, or else the atmosphere affects them 
strangely when exported hither. Perhaps they suffer from 
the sea-voyage like some of the more delicate wines. Dur- 
ing our Civil War an English gentleman of the highest 
description was kind enough to call upon me, mainly, as it 
seemed, to inform me how entirely he sympathized with the 
Confederates, and how sure he felt that we could never 
subdue them, — ''they were the gentlemen of the country, 
you know." Another, the first greetings hardly over, asked 
me how I accounted for the universal meagerness of my 
countrymen. To a thinner man than I, or from a stouter 
man than he, the question might have been offensive. The 



i84 American Essays 

Marquis of Hartington^ wore a secession badge at a 
public ball in New York. In a civilized country he might 
have been roughly handled ; but here, where the bienseances 
are not so well understood, of course nobody minded it. A 
French traveler told me he had been a good deal in the 
British colonies, and had been astonished to see how soon 
the people became Americanized. He added, with delightful 
bonhomie, and as if he were sure it would charm me, that 
" they even began to talk through their noses, just like 
you! " I was naturally ravished with this testimony to the 
assimilating power of democracy, and could only reply 
that I hoped they would never adopt our democratic patent- 
method of seeming to settle one's honest debts, for they 
would find it paying through the nose in the long-run. I 
am a man of the New World, and do not know precisely 
the present fashion of May-Fair, but I have a kind of feel- 
ing that if an American (mutato nomine, de te is always 
frightfully possible) were to do this kind of thing under a 
European roof, it would induce some disagreeable reflec- 
tions as to the ethical results of democracy. I read the 
other day in print the remark of a British tourist who had 
eaten large quantities of our salt, such as it is (I grant 
it has not the European savor), that the Americans were 
hospitable, no doubt, but that it was partly because they 
longed for foreign visitors to relieve the tedium of their 
dead-level existence, and partly from ostentation. What 
shall we do? Shall we close our doors? Not I, for one, 

. ' One of Mr. Lincoln's neatest strokes of humor was his treatT 
ment of this gentleman when a laudable curiosity induced him to 
be presented to the President of the Broken Bubble. Mr. Lincoln 
persisted in calling him Mr. Partington. Surely the refinement of 
good-breeding could go no further. Giving the young man his real 
name (already notorious in the newspapers) would have made his 
visit an insult. Had Henri IV. done this, it would have been 
famous. 



On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners 185 

if I should so have forfeited the friendship of L. S., most 
lovable of men. He somehow seems to find us human, 
at least, and so did Clough, whose poetry will one of these 
days, perhaps, be found to have been the best utterance in 
verse of this generation. 

The fine old Tory aversion of former times was not hard 
to bear. There was something even refreshing in it, as 
in a northeaster to a hardy temperament. When a British 
parson, traveling in Newfoundland while the slash of our 
separation was still raw, after prophesying a glorious fu- 
ture for an island that continued to dry its fish under the 
aegis of Saint George, glances disdainfully over his spec- 
tacles in parting at the U. S. A., and forebodes for them a 
'' speedy relapse into barbarism," now that they have madly 
cut themselves ofif from the humanizing influences of 
Britain, I smile with barbarian self-conceit. But this kind 
of thing became by degrees an unpleasant anachronism. 
For meanwhile the young giant was growing, was begin- 
ning indeed to feel tight in his clothes, was obliged to let 
in a gore here and there in Texas, in California, in New 
Mexico, in Alaska, and had the scissors and needle and 
thread ready for Canada when the time came. His shadow 
loomed like a Brocken-specter over against Europe, — the 
shadow of what they were coming to, that was the unpleas- 
ant part of it. Even in such misty image as they had of 
him, it was painfully evident that his clothes were not of 
any cut hitherto fashionable, nor conceivable by a Bond 
Street tailor, — and this in an age, too, when everything 
depends upon clothes, when, if we dO not keep up appear- 
ances, the seeming-solid frame of this universe, nay, your 
very God, would slump into himself, like a mockery king 
of snow, being nothing, after all, but a prevailing mode. 
From this moment the young giant assumed the respectable 
aspect of a phenomenon, to be got rid of if possible, but 



1 86 American Essays 

at any rate as legitimate a subject of human study as the 
glacial period or the silurian what-d'ye-call-ems. If the 
man of the primeval drift-heaps be so absorbingly inter- 
esting, why not the man of the drift that is just beginning, 
of the drift into whose irresistible current we are just 
being sucked whether we will or no? If I were in their 
place, I confess I should not be frightened. Man has sur- 
vived so much, and contrived to be comfortable on this 
planet after surviving so much ! I am something of a 
protestant in matters of government also, and am willing to 
get rid of vestments and ceremonies and to come down to 
bare benches, if only faith in God take the place of a gen- 
eral agreement to profess confidence in ritual and sham. 
Every mortal man of us holds stock in the only public debt 
that is absolutely sure of payment, and that is the debt 
of the Maker of this Universe to the Universe he has made. 
I have no notion of selling out my shares in a panic. 

It was something to have advanced even to the dignity 
of a phenomenon, and yet I do not know that the relation 
of the individual American to the individual European was 
bettered by it; and that, after all, must adjust itself com- 
fortably before there can be a right understanding between 
the two. We had been a desert, we became a museum. 
People came hither for scientific and not social ends. The. 
very cockney could not complete his education without tak- 
ing a vacant stare at us in passing. But the sociologists (I 
think they call themselves so) were the hardest to bear. 
There was no escape. I have even known a professor of 
this fearful science to come disguised in petticoats. We 
were cross-examined as a chemist cross-examines a new 
substance. Human? yes, all the elements are present, 
though abnormally combined. Civilized ? Hm ! that needs 
a stricter assay. No entomologist could take a more friendly 
interest in a strange bug. After a few such experiences, 



On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners 187 

I, for one, have felt as if I were merely one of those horrid 
things preserved in spirits (and very bad spirits, too) in 
a cabinet. I was not the fellow-being of these explorers: 
I was a curiosity; I was a specimen. Hath not an Ameri- 
can organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions even 
as a European hath? If you prick us, do we not bleed? 
If you tickle us, do we not laugh? I will not keep on 
with Shylock to his next question but one. 

Till after our Civil War it never seemed to enter the 
head of any foreigner, especially of any Englishman, that 
an American had what could be called a country, except as 
a place to eat, sleep, and trade in. Then it seemed to strike 
them suddenly. *' By Jove, you know, fellahs don't fight 
like that for a shop-till ! " No, I rather think not. To 
Americans America is something more than a promise and 
an expectation. It has a past and traditions of its own. 
A descent from men who sacrificed everything and came 
hither, not to better their fortunes, but to plant their idea 
in virgin soil, should be a good pedigree. There was never 
colony save this that went forth, not to seek gold, but God. Is 
it not as well to have sprung from such as these as from some 
burly beggar who came over with Wilhelmus Conquestor, 
unless, indeed, a line grow better as it runs farther away 
from stalwart ancestors? And for our history, it is dry 
enough, no doubt, in the books, but, for all that, is of a 
kind that tells in the blood. I have admitted that Carlyle's 
sneer had a show of truth in it. But what does he himself, 
like a true Scot, admire in the Hohenzollerns ? First of all, 
that they were canny, a thrifty, forehanded race. Next, 
that they made a good fight from generation to generation 
with the chaos around them. That is precisely the battle 
which the English race on this continent has been carrying 
doughtily on for two centuries and a half. Doughtily and 
silently, for you cannot hear in Europe " that crash, the 



i88 American Essays 

death-song of the perfect tree," that has been going on 
here from sturdy father to sturdy son, and making this 
continent habitable for the weaker Old World breed that 
has swarmed to it during the last half-century. If ever men 
did a good stroke of work on this planet, it was the fore- 
fathers of those whom you are wondering whether it would 
not be prudent to acknowledge as far-off cousins. Alas, 
man of genius, to whom we owe so much, could you see 
nothing more than the burning of a foul chimney in that 
clash of Michael and Satan which flamed up under your 
very eyes? 

Before our war we were to Europe but a huge mob 
of adventurers and shopkeepers. Leigh Hunt expressed it 
well enough when he said that he could never think of 
America without seeing a gigantic counter stretched all 
along the seaboard. Feudalism had by degrees made com- 
merce, the great civilizer, contemptible. But a tradesman 
with sword on thigh and very prompt of stroke was not 
only redoubtable, he had become respectable also. Few 
people, I suspect, alluded twice to a needle in Sir. John 
Hawkwood's presence, after that doughty fighter had ex- 
changed it for a more dangerous tool of the same metal. 
Democracy had been hitherto only a ludicrous effort to 
reverse the laws of nature by thrusting Cleon into the place 
of Pericles. But a democracy that could fight for an ab- 
straction, whose members held life and goods cheap com- 
pared with that larger life which we call country, was not 
merely unheard of, but portentous. It was the nightmare 
of the Old World taking upon itself flesh and blood, turning 
out to be substance and not dream. Since the Norman 
crusader clanged down upon the throne of the porphyro- 
geniti, carefully-draped appearances had never received 
such a shock, had never been so rudely called on to produce 
their titles to the empire of the world. Authority has had 



On A Certain Condescension in Foreigners 189 

its periods not unlike those of geology, and at last comes 
Man claiming kingship in right of his mere manhood. The 
world of the Saurians might be in some respects more 
picturesque, but the marcli of events is inexorable, and it 
is bygone. 

The young giant had certainly got out of long-clothes. 
He had become the enfant terrible of the human household. 
It was not and will not be easy for the world (especially 
for our British cousins) to look upon us as grown up. The 
youngest of nations, its people must also be young and 
to be treated accordingly, was the syllogism. Youth has 
its good qualities, as people feel who are losing it, but boy- 
ishness is another thing. We had been somewhat boyish 
as a nation, a little loud, a little pushing, a little braggart. 
But might it not partly have been because we felt that we 
had certain claims to respect that were not admitted ? The 
war which established our position as a vigorous nationality 
has also sobered us. A nation, like a man, cannot look 
death in the eye for four years without some strange reflec- 
tions, without arriving at some clearer consciousness of 
the stuff it is made of, without some great moral change. 
Such a change, or the beginning of it, no observant person 
can fail to see here. Our thought and our politics, our bear- 
ing as a people, are assuming a manlier tone. We have 
been compelled to see what was weak in democracy as well 
as what was strong. We have begun obscurely to recog- 
nize that things do not go of themselves, and that popular 
government is not in itself a panacea, is no better than any 
other form except as the virtue and wisdom of the people 
make it so, and that when men undertake to do their own 
kingship, they enter upon the dangers and responsibilities 
as well as the privileges of the function. Above all, it looks 
as if we were on the way to be persuaded that no govern- 
ment can be carried on by declamation. It is noticeable also 



190 American Essays 

that facility of communication has made the best English 
and French thought far more directly operative here than 
ever before. Without being Europeanized, our discussion 
of important questions in statesmanship, in political econ- 
omy, in aesthetics, is taking a broader scope and a higher 
tone. It had certainly been provincial, one might almost 
say local, to a very unpleasant extent. Perhaps our ex- 
perience in soldiership has taught us to value training more 
than wt have been popularly w^ont. We may possibly come 
to the conclusion, one of these days, that self-made men 
may not be always equally skillful in the manufacture of 
wisdom, may not be divinely commissioned to fabricate 
the higher qualities of opinion on all possible topics of 
human interest. 

So long as we continue to be the most common-schooled 
and the least cultivated people in the world, I suppose we 
must consent to endure this condescending manner of for- 
eigners toward us. The more friendly they mean to be the 
more ludicrously prominent it becomes. They can never 
appreciate the immense amount of silent work that has 
been done here, making this continent slowly fit for the 
abode of man, and which will demonstrate itself, let us hope, 
in the character of the people. Outsiders can only be ex- 
pected to judge a nation by the amount it has contributed 
to the civilization of the world ; the amount, that is, that 
can be seen and handled. A great place in history can 
only be achieved by competitive examinations, nay, by a 
long course of them. How much new thought have we con- 
tributed to the common stock? Till that question can be' 
trium.phantly answered, or needs no answer, we must con- 
tinue to be simply interesting as an experiment, to be 
studied as a problem, and not respected as an attained 
result or an accomplished solution. Perhaps, as I have 
hinted, their patronizing manner toward us is the fair result 



On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners 191 

of their failing to see here anything more than a poor imi- 
tation, a plaster-cast of Europe. And are they not partly 
right? If the tone of the uncultivated American has too 
often the arrogance of the barbarian, is not that of the 
cultivated as often vulgarly apologetic? In the American 
they meet with is there the simplicity, the manliness, the 
absence of sham, the sincere human nature, the sensitive- 
ness to duty and implied obligation, that in any way distin- 
guishes us from what our orators call " the effete civiliza- 
tion of the Old World " ? Is there a politician among us 
daring enough (except a Dana here and there) to risk his 
future on the chance of our keeping our word with the 
exactness of superstitious communities like England? Is it 
certain that we shall be ashamed of a bankruptcy of honor, 
if we can only keep the letter of our bond ? I hope we shall 
be able to answer all these questions with a frank 3;^^. At 
any rate, we would advise our visitors that we are not merely 
curious creatures, but belong to the family of man, and 
that, as individuals, we are not to be always subjected to 
the competitive examination above mentioned, even if we 
acknowledged their competence as an examining board. 
Above all, we beg them to remember that America is not 
to us, as to them, a mere object of external interest to be 
discussed and analyzed, but in us, part of our very marrow. 
Let them not suppose that we conceive of ourselves as exiles 
from the graces and amenities of an older date than we, 
though very much at home in a state of things not yet all 
it might be or should be, but which we mean to make so, 
and which we find both wholesome and pleasant for men 
(though perhaps not for dilettanti) to live in. '' The full 
tide of human existence " may be felt here as keenly as 
Johnson felt it at Charing Cross, and in a larger sense. I 
know one person who is singular enough to think Cam- 
bridge the very best spot on the habitable globe. '' Doubt- 



192 American Essays 

less God could have made a better, but doubtless he never 
did." 

It will take England a great while to get over her airs 
of patronage toward us, or even passably to conceal them. 
She cannot help confounding the people with the country, 
and regarding us as lusty juveniles. She has a conviction 
that whatever good there is in us is wholly English, when 
the truth is that we are worth nothing except so far as we 
have disinfected ourselves of Anglicism. She is especially 
condescending just now, and lavishes sugar-plums on us 
as if we had not outgrown them. I am no believer in sudden 
conversions, especially in sudden conversions to a favorable 
opinion of people who have just proved you to be mistaken 
in judgment and therefore unwise in policy. I never 
blamed her for not wishing well to democracy, — how should 
she? — but Alabamas are not wishes. Let her not be too 
hasty in believing Mr. Reverdy Johnson's pleasant words. 
Though there is no thoughtful man in America who would 
not consider a war with England the greatest of calamities, 
yet the feeling towards her here is very far from cordial, 
whatever our Minister may say in the effusion that comes 
after ample dining. Mr. Adams, with his famous " My 
Lord, this means war," perfectly represented his country. 
Justly or not, we have a feeling that we have been wronged, 
not merely insulted. The only sure way of bringing about 
a healthy relation between the two countries is for Eng- 
Hshmen to clear their minds of the notion that we are always 
to. be treated as a kind of inferior and deported English- 
man whose nature they perfectly understand, and whose 
back they accordingly stroke the wrong way of the fur with 
amazing perseverance. Let them learn to treat us natu- 
rally on our merits as human beings, as they would a 
German or a Frenchman, and not as if we were a kind of 
counterfeit Briton whose crime appeared in every shade 



On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners 193 

of difference, and before long there would come that right 
feeling which we naturally call a good understanding. The 
common blood, and still more the common language, are 
fatal instruments of misapprehension. Let them give up 
trying to understand us, still more thinking that they do, 
and acting in various absurd ways as the necessary conse- 
quence, for they will never arrive at that devoutly-to-be- 
wished consummation, till they learn to look at us as we 
are and not as they suppose us to be. Dear old long- 
estranged mother-in-law, it is a great many years since we 
parted. Since 1660, when you married again, you have been 
a stepmother to us. Put on your spectacles, dear madam. 
Yes, we have grown, and changed likewise. You would 
not let us darken your doors, if you could help it. We 
know that perfectly well. But pray, when we look to be 
treated as men, don't shake that rattle in our faces, nor 
talk baby to us any longer. 

" Do, child, go to it grandam, child ; 
Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will 
Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig ! " 



PREFACE TO " LEAVES OF GRASS " 

1855 

Walt Whitman 

America does not repel the past, or what the past has 
produced under its forms, or amid other poHtics, or the 
idea of castes, or the old religions — accepts the lesson with 
calmness — is not impatient because the slough still sticks 
to opinions and manners in literature, while the life which 
served its requirements has passed into the new life of the 
new forms — perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from 
the eating and sleeping rooms of the house — perceives that 
it waits a little while in the door — that it was fittest for its 
days — that its action has descended to the stalwart and well- 
shaped heir who approaches — and that he shall be fittest for 
his days. 

The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth, 
have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United 
States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. In the 
history of the earth hitherto, the largest and most stirring 
appear tame and orderly to their ampler largeness and stir. 
Here at last is something in the doings of man that corre- 
sponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night. 
Here is action untied from strings, necessarily bhnd to par- 
ticulars and details, magnificently moving in masses. Here 
is the hospitality which for ever indicates heroes. Here the 
performance, disdaining the trivial, unapproach'd in the tre- 
mendous audacity of its crowds and groupings, and the push 
of its perspective, spreads with crampless and flowing 

194 



Preface to '' Leaves of Grass " 195 

breadth, and showers its prolific and splendid extravagance. 
One sees it must indeed own the riches of the summer 
and winter, and need never be bankrupt while corn grows 
from the ground, or the orchards drop apples, or the bays 
contain fish, or men beget children upon women. 

Other states indicate themselves in their deputies — but the 
genius of the United States is not best or most in its execu- 
tives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors, or 
colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers 
or inventors — but always most in the common people, south, 
north, west, east, in all its States, through all its mighty 
amplitude. The largeness of the nation, however, were 
monstrous without a corresponding largeness and generosity 
of the spirit of the citizen. Not swarming states, nor streets 
and steamships, nor prosperous business, nor farms, nor 
capital, nor learning, may suffice for the ideal of man — nor 
suffice the poet. No reminiscences may suffice either. A 
live nation can always cut a deep mark, and can have the 
best authority the cheapest — namely, from its own soul. 
This is the sum of the profitable uses of individuals or 
states, and of present action and grandeur, and of the 
subjects of poets. (As if it were necessary to trot back 
generation after generation to the eastern records ! As 
if the beauty and sacredness of the demonstrable must fall 
behind that of the mythical ! As if men do not make their 
mark out of any times! As if the opening of the western 
continent by discovery, and what has transpired in North 
and South America, were less than the small theater of the 
antique, or the aimless sleep-walking of the middle ages!) 
The pride of the United States leaves the wealth and finesse 
of the cities, and all returns of commerce and agriculture, 
and all the magnitude of geography or shows of exterior 
victory, to enjoy the sight and realization of full-sized 
men, or one full-sized man unconquerable and simple. 



196 American Essays 

The American poets are to inclose old and new, for 
America is the race of races. The expression of the Ameri- 
can poet is to be transcendent and new. It is to be indirect, 
and not direct or descriptive or epic. Its quality goes 
through these to much more. Let the age and wars of 
other nations be chanted, and their eras and characters be 
illustrated, and that finish the verse. Not so the great 
psalm of the republic. Here the theme is creative, and 
has vista. Whatever stagnates in the flat of custom or 
obedience or legislation, the great poet never stagnates. 
Obedience does not master him, he masters it. High up 
out of reach he stands, turning a concentrated light — he 
turns the pivot with his finger — he baffles the swiftest run- 
ners as he stands, and easily overtakes and envelopes them. 
The time straying toward infidelity and confections and 
persiflage he withholds by steady faith. Faith is the anti- 
septic of the soul^it pervades the common people and pre- 
serves them — they never give up believing and expecting 
and trusting. There is that indescribable freshness and un- 
consciousness about an illiterate person, that humbles and 
mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius. The 
poet sees for a certainty how one not a great artist may 
be just as sacred and perfect as the greatest artist. 

The power to destroy or remould is freely used by the 
greatest poet, but seldom the power of attack. What is past 
is past. If he does not expose superior models, and prove 
himself by every step he takes, he is not what is wanted. 
The presence of the great poet conquers — not parleying, or 
struggling, or any prepared attempts. Now he has passed 
that way, see after him ! There is not left any vestige of 
despair, or misanthropy, or cunning, or exclusiveness, or 
the ignominy of a nativity or color, or delusion of hell or 
the necessity of hell — and no man thenceforward shall be 
degraded for ignorance or weakness or sin. The greatest 



Preface to " Leaves of Grass " 197 

poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality. If he breathes 
into anything that was before thought small, it dilates with 
the grandeur and life of the universe. He is a seer — he 
is individual — he is complete in himself — the others are as 
good as he, only he sees it, and they do not. He is not one 
of the chorus — he does not stop for any regulation — he is 
the president of regulation. What the eyesight does to the 
rest, he does to the rest. Who knows the curious mystery 
of the eyesight? The other senses corroborate themselves, 
but this is removed from any proof but its own, and fore- 
runs the identities of the spiritual world. A single glance 
of it mocks all the investigations of man, and all the instru- 
ments and books of the earth, and all reasoning. What is 
marvelous? what is unlikely? what is impossible or baseless 
or vague — after you have once just open'd the space of a 
peach-pit, and given audience to far and near, and to the 
sunset, and had all things enter with electric swiftness, 
softly and duly, without confusion or jostling or jam? 

The land and sea, the animals, fishes and birds, the sky 
of heaven and the orbs, the forests, mountains and rivers, 
are not small themes — but folks expect of the poet to 
indicate more than the beauty and dignity which always 
attach to dumb real objects — they expect him to indicate 
the path between reality and their souls. Men and women 
perceive the beauty well enough — probably as well as he. 
The passionate tenacity of hunters, woodmen, early risers, 
cultivators of gardens and orchards and fields, the love of 
healthy women for the manly form, seafaring persons, 
drivers of horses, the passion for light and the open air, 
all is an old varied sign of the unfailing perception of 
beauty, and of a residence of the poetic in out-door people. 
They can never be assisted by poets to perceive — some may, 
but they never can. The poetic quality is not marshal'd 
in rhyme or uniformity, or abstract addresses to things, nor 



198 American Essays 

in melancholy complaints or good precepts, but is the life 
of these and much else, and is in the soul. The profit of 
rhyme is that it drops seeds of a sweeter and more luxuri- 
ant rhyme, and of uniformity that it conveys itself into its 
own roots in the ground out of sight. The rhyme and 
uniformity of perfect poems show the free growth of 
metrical laws, and bud from them as unerringly and loosely 
as lilacs and roses on a bush, and take shapes as compact 
as the shapes of chestnuts and oranges, and melons and 
pears, and shed the perfume impalpable to form. The 
fluency and ornaments of the finest poems or music or 
orations or recitations, are not independent but dependent. 
All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain. 
If the greatnesses are in conjunction in a man or woman, 
it is enough — the fact will prevail through the universe ; 
but the gaggery and gilt of a million years will not prevail. 
Who troubles himself about his ornaments or fluency is lost. 
This is what you shall do : Love the earth and sun and the 
animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, 
stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and 
labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, 
have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off 
your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man 
or number of men — go freely with powerful uneducated 
persons, and with the young, and with the mothers of 
families — re-examine all you have been told in school or 
church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your 
own soul ; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and 
have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the 
silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes 
of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body. 
The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He 
shall know that the ground is already plow'd and manured ; 
others may not know it, but he shall. He shall go directly 



Preface to " Leaves of Grass " 199 

to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of every- 
thing he touches — and shall master all attachment. 

The known universe has one complete lover, and that 
is the greatest poet. He consumes an eternal passion, and 
is indifferent which chance happens, and which possible 
contingency of fortune or misfortune, and persuades daily 
and hourly his delicious pay. What balks or breaks others 
is fuel for his burning progress to contact and amorous joy. 
Other proportions of the reception of pleasure dwindle 
to nothing to his proportions. All expected from heaven 
or from the highest, he is rapport with in the sight of the 
daybreak, or the scenes of the winter woods, or the pres- 
ence of children playing, or with his arm round the neck 
of a man or woman. His love above all love has leisure 
and expanse — he leaves room ahead of himself. He is no 
irresolute or suspicious lover — he is sure — he scorns inter- 
vals. His experience and the showers and thrills are not for 
nothing. Nothing can jar him — suffering and darkness can- 
not — death and fear cannot. To him complaint and jealousy 
and envy are corpses buried and rotten in the earth — he saw 
them buried. The sea is not surer of the shore, or the 
shore of the sea, than he is of the fruition of his love, and of 
all perfection and beauty. 

The fruition of beauty is no chance of miss or hit — it is 
as inevitable as life — it is exact and plumb as gravitation. 
From the eyesight proceeds another eyesight, and from the 
hearing proceeds another hearing, and from the voice pro- 
ceeds another voice, eternally curious of the harmony of 
things with man. These understand the law of perfection 
in masses and floods — that it is profuse and impartial — that 
there is not a minute of the light or dark, nor an acre 
of the earth and sea, without it — nor any direction of the 
sky, nor any trade or employment, nor any turn of events. 
This is the reason that about the proper expression of beauty 



200 American Essays 

there is precision and balance. One part does not need to 
be thrust above another. The best singer is not the one 
who has the most lithe and powerful organ. The pleasure 
of poems is not in them that take the handsomest measure 
and sound. 

Without efifort, and without exposing in the least how 
it is done, the greatest poet brings the spirit of any or all 
events and passions and scenes and persons, some more and 
some less, to bear on your individual character as you hear 
or read. To do this well is to compete with the- laws that 
pursue and follow Time. What is the purpose must surely 
be there, and the clew of it must be there — and the faintest 
indication is the indication of the best, and then becomes 
the clearest indication. Past and present and future are not 
disjoin'd but join'd. The greatest poet forms the con- 
sistence of what is to be, from what has been and is. He 
drags the dead out of their coffins and stands them again 
on their feet. He says to the past, Rise and walk before 
me that I may realize you. He learns the lesson — he places 
himself where the future becomes present. The greatest 
poet does not only dazzle his rays over character and scenes 
and passions — he finally ascends, and finishes all — he exhibits 
the pinnacles that no man can tell what they are for, or 
what is beyond — he glows a moment on the extremest 
verge. He is most wonderful in his last half-hidden smile or 
frown ; by that flash of the moment of parting the one that 
sees it shall be encouraged or terrified afterward for many 
years. The greatest poet does not moralize or make appli- 
cations of morals — he knows the soul. The soul has that 
measureless pride which consists in never acknowledging 
any lessons or deductions but its own. But it has sympathy 
as measureless as its pride, and the one balances the other, 
and neither can stretch too far while it stretches in company 
with the other. The inmost secrets of art sleep with the 



Preface to '' Leaves of Grass " 201 

twain. The greatest poet has lain close betwixt both,, and 
they are vital in his style and thoughts. 

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sun- 
shine of the light of letters, is simplicity. Nothing is better 
than simplicity — nothing can make up for excess, or for 
the lack of definiteness. To carry on the heave of impulse 
and pierce intellectual depths and give all subjects their 
articulations, are powers neither common nor very un- 
common. But to speak in literature with the perfect recti- 
tude and insouciance of the movements of animals, and 
the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the 
woods and grass by the roadside, is the flawless triumph 
of art. If you have look'd on him who has achiev'd it you 
have look'd on one of the masters of the artists of all 
nations and times. You shall not contemplate the flight 
of the gray gull over the bay, or the mettlesome action of 
the blood horse, or the tall leaning of sunflowers on their 
stalk, or the appearance of the sun journeying through 
heaven, or the appearance of the moon afterward, with any 
more satisfaction than you shall contemplate him. The 
great poet has less a mark'd style, and is more the channel 
of thoughts and things without increase or diminution, 
and is the free channel of himself. He swears to his art, 
I will not be meddlesome, I will not have in my writing 
any elegance, or effect, or originality, to hang in the way 
between me and the rest like curtains. I will have nothing 
hang in the way, not the richest curtains. What I tell I 
tell for precisely what it is. Let who may exalt or startle 
or fascinate or soothe, I will have purposes as health or 
heat or snow has, and be as regardless of observation. 
What I experience or portray shall go from my composi- 
tion without a' shred of my composition. You shall stand 
by my side and look in the mirror with me. 

The old red blood and stainless gentility of great poets 



202 American Essays 

will be proved by their unconstraint. A heroic person walks 
at his ease through and out of that custom or precedent 
or authority that suits him not. Of the traits of the 
brotherhood of first-class writers, savans, musicians, in- 
ventors and artists, nothing is finer than silent defiance ad- 
vancing from new free forms. In the need of poems, phi- 
losophy, politics, mechanism, science, behavior, the craft 
of art, an appropriate native grand opera, shipcraft, or 
any craft, he is greatest for ever and ever who contributes 
the greatest original practical example. The cleanest ex- 
pression is that which finds no sphere worthy of itself, and 
makes one. 

The messages of great poems to each man and woman 
are, Come to us on equal terms, only then can you under- 
stand us. We are no better than you, what we inclose 
you inclose, what we enjoy you may enjoy. Did you sup- 
pose there could be only one Supreme ? We affirm there can 
be unnumber'd Supremes, and that one does not countervail 
another any more than one eyesight countervails another — 
and that men can be good or grand only of the consciousness 
of their supremacy within them. What do you think is 
the grandeur of storms and dismemberments, and the dead- 
liest battles and wrecks, and the wildest fury of the ele- 
ments, and the power of the sea, and the motion of Nature, 
and the throes of human desires, and dignity and hate and 
love? It is that something in the soul which says, Rage 
on, whirl on, I tread master here and everywhere — Master 
of the spasms of the sky and of the shatter of the sea, 
Master of nature and passion and death, and of all terror 
and all pain. 

The American bards shall be mark'd for generosity and 
affection, and for encouraging competitors. They shall 
be Kosmos, without monopoly or secrecy, glad to pass any- 
thing to anyone — hungry for equals night and day. They 



Preface to " Leaves of Grass *' 203 

shall not be careful of riches and privilege — they shall be 
riches and privilege — they shall perceive who the most 
affluent man is. The most affluent man is he that confronts 
all the shows he sees by equivalents out of the stronger 
wealth of himself. The American bard shall delineate no 
class of persons, nor one or two out of the strata of inter- 
ests, nor love most nor truth most, nor the soul most, nor 
the body most — and not be for the Eastern States more than 
the Western, or the Northern States more than the 
Southern. 

Exact science and its practical movements are no checks 
on the greatest poet, but always his encouragement and sup- 
port. The outset and remembrance are there — there the 
arms that lifted him first, and braced him best — there he 
returns after all his goings and comings. The sailor and 
traveler — the anatomist, chemist, astronomer, geologist, 
phrenologist, spiritualist, mathematician, historian, and 
lexicographer, are not poets, but they are the lawgivers of 
poets, and their construction underhes the structure of every 
perfect poem. No matter what rises or is utter'd, they sent 
the seed of the conception of it — of them and by them stand 
the visible proofs of souls. If there shall be love and con- 
tent between the father and the son, and if the greatness of 
the son is the exuding of the greatness of the father, there 
shall be love between the poet and the man of demonstrable 
science. In the beauty of poems are henceforth the tuft 
and final applause of science. 

Great is the faith of the flush of knowledge, and of the 
investigation of the depths of qualities and things. Cleaving 
and circling here swells the soul of the poet, yet is president 
of itself always. The depths are fathomless, and therefore 
calm. The innocence and nakedness are resumed — they are 
neither modest nor immodest. The whole theory of the 
supernatural, and all that was twined with it or educed out 



204 American Essays 

of it, departs as a dream. What has ever happen'd — what 
happens, and whatever may or shall happen, the vital laws 
inclose all. They are sufficient for any case and for all 
cases — none to be hurried or retarded — any special miracle 
of affairs or persons inadmissible in the vast clear scheme 
where every motion and every spear of grass, and the 
frames and spirits of men and women and all that concerns 
them, are unspeakably perfect miracles, all referring to all, 
and each distinct and in its place. It is also not consistent 
with the reality of the soul to admit that there is anything 
in the known universe more divine than men and women. 

Men and women, and the earth and all upon it, are to 
be taken as they are, and the investigation of their past 
and present and future shall be unintermitted, and shall 
be done with perfect candor. Upon this basis philosophy 
speculates, ever looking towards the poet, ever regarding 
the eternal tendencies of all toward happiness, never incon- 
sistent with what is clear to the senses and to the soul. 
For the eternal tendencies of all toward happiness make the 
only point of sane philosophy. Whatever comprehends less 
than that — whatever is less than the laws of light and of 
astronomical motion — or less than the laws that follow the 
thief, the liar, the glutton and the drunkard, through this 
life and doubtless afterward — or less than vast stretches of 
time, or the slow formation of density, or the patient up- 
heaving of strata — is of no account. Whatever would put 
God in a poem or system of philosophy as contending against 
some being or influence, is also of no account. Sanity and 
ensemble characterize the great master — spoilt in one prin- 
ciple, all is spoilt. The great master has nothing to do with 
miracles. He sees health for himself in being one of the 
mass — he sees the hiatus in singular eminence. To the per- 
fect shape comes common ground. To be under the general 
law is great, for that is to correspond with it. The master 



Preface to '' Leaves of Grass " 205 

knows that he is unspeakably great, and that all are un- 
speakably great — that nothing, for instance, is greater than 
to conceive children, and bring them up well — that to he is 
just as great as to perceive or tell. 

In the make of the great masters the idea of political 
liberty is indispensable. Liberty takes the adherence of 
heroes wherever man and woman exist — but never takes 
any adherence or welcome from the rest more than from 
poets. They are the voice and exposition of liberty. They 
out of ages are worthy the grand idea — to them it is con- 
fided, and they must sustain it. Nothing has precedence of 
it, and nothing can warp or degrade it. 

As the attributes of the poets of the kosmos concenter in 
the real body, and in the pleasure of things, they possess the 
superiority of genuineness over all fiction and romance. 
As they emit themselves, facts are shower'd over with light 
— the daylight is lit with more volatile light — the deep be- 
tween the setting and rising sun goes deeper many fold. 
Each precise object or condition or combination or process 
exhibits a beauty — the multiplication table its — old age its — 
the carpenter's trade its — the grand opera its — the huge- 
hull'd clean-shap'd New York clipper at sea under steam 
or full sail gleams with unmatch'd beauty — the American 
circles and large harmonies of government gleam with theirs 
— and the commonest definite intentions and actions with 
theirs. The poets of the kosmos advance through all inter- 
positions and coverings and turmoils and stratagems to 
first principles. They are of use — they dissolve poverty 
from its need, and riches from its conceit. You large 
proprietor, they say, shall not realize or perceive more than 
anyone else. The owner of the library is not he who holds 
a legal title to it, having bought and paid for it. Anyone 
and everyone is owner of the library, (indeed he or she 
alone is owner,) who can read the same through all the 



2o6 American Essays 

varieties of tongues and subjects and styles, and in whom 
they enter with ease, and make supple and powerful and 
rich and large. 

These American States, strong and healthy and accom- 
plish'd, shall receive no pleasure from violations of natural 
models, and must not permit them. In paintings or mouldings 
or carvings in mineral or wood, or in the illustrations of 
books or newspapers, or in the patterns of woven stuffs, 
or anything to beautify rooms or furniture or costumes, 
or to put upon cornices or monuments, or on the prows or 
sterns of ships, or to put anywhere before the human eye 
indoors or out, that which distorts honest shapes, or which 
creates unearthly beings or places or contingencies, is a 
nuisance and revolt. Of the human form especially, it is 
so great it must never be made ridiculous. Of ornaments 
to a work nothing outre can be allow'd — but those orna- 
ments can be allow'd that conform to the perfect facts 
of the open air, and that flow out of the nature of the work, 
and come irrepressibly from it, and are necessary to the 
completion of the work. Most works are most beautiful 
without ornament. Exaggerations will be revenged in hu- 
man physiology. Clean and vigorous children are jetted and 
conceiv'd only in those communities where the models of 
natural forms are public every day. Great genius and the 
people of these States must never be demean'd to romances. 
As soon as histories are properly told, no more need of 
romances. 

The great poets are to be known by the absence in them 
of tricks, and by the justification of perfect personal candor. 
All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor. 
Henceforth let no man of us lie, for we have seen that 
openness wins the inner and outer world, and that there 
is no single exception, and that never since our earth gath- 
er'd itself in a mass have deceit or subterfuge or prevarica- 



Preface to '' Leaves of Grass " 207 

tion attracted its smallest particle or the faintest tinge of 
a shade — and that through the enveloping v^ealth and rank 
of a state, or the v^hole republic of states, a sneak or sly 
person shall be discover'd and despised — and that the soul 
has never once been fool'd and never can be fool'd — and 
thrift without the loving nod of the soul is only a foetid 
puff — and there never grew up in any of the continents 
of the globe, nor upon any planet or satellite, nor in that 
condition which precedes the birth of babes, nor at any 
time during the changes of life, nor in any stretch of abey- 
ance or action of vitality, nor in any process of formation 
or reformation anywhere, a being whose instinct hated the 
truth. 

Extreme caution or prudence, the soundest organic health, 
large hope and comparison and fondness for women and 
children, large alimentiveness and destructiveness and 
causality, with a perfect sense of the oneness of nature, 
and the propriety of the same spirit applied to human affairs, 
are called up of the float of the brain of the world to be 
parts of the greatest poet from his birth out of his mother's 
womb, and from her birth out of her mother's. Caution 
seldom goes far enough. It has been thought that the pru- 
dent citizen was the citizen who applied himself to solid 
gains, and did well for himself and for his family, and 
completed a lawful life without debt or crime. The greatest 
poet sees and admits these economies as he sees the econo- 
mies of food and sleep, but has higher notions of prudence 
than to think he gives much when he gives a few slight 
attentions at the latch of the gate. The premises of the 
prudence of life are not the hospitality of it, or the ripe- 
ness and harvest of it. Beyond the independence of a little 
sum laid aside for burial-money, and of a few clap-boards 
around and shingles overhead on a lot of American soil 
own'd, and the easy dollars that supply the year's plain 



2o8 American Essays 

clothing and meals, the melancholy prudence of the aban- 
donment of such a great being as a man is, to the toss and 
pallor of years of money-making, with all their scorching 
days and icy nights, and all their stifling deceits and under- 
hand dodgings, or infinitesimals of parlors, or shameless 
stuffing while others starve, and all the loss of the bloom 
and odor of the earth, and of the flowers and atmosphere, 
and of the sea, and of the true taste of the women and men 
you pass or have to do with in youth or middle age, and the 
issuing sickness and desperate revolt at the close of a life 
without elevation or naivete, (even if you have achiev'd 
a secure 10,000 a year, or election to Congress or the Gov- 
ernorship,) and the ghastly chatter of a death without 
serenity or majesty, is the great fraud upon modern civiliza- 
tion and forethought, blotching the surface and system 
which civilization undeniably drafts, and moistening with 
tears the immense features it spreads and spreads with such 
velocity before the reach'd kisses of the soul. 

Ever the right explanation remains to be made about 
prudence. The prudence of the mere wealth and re^- 
spectability of the most esteem'd life appears too faint for 
the eye to observe at all, when little and large alike drop 
quietly aside at the thought of the prudence suitable for 
immortality. What is the wisdom that fills the thinness 
of a year, or seventy or eighty years — to the wisdom spaced 
out by ages, and coming back at a certain time with strong 
reinforcements and rich presents, and the clear faces of 
wedding-guests as far as you can look, in every direction, 
running gayly toward you? Only the soul is of itself — all 
else has reference to what ensues. All that a person does 
or thinks is of consequence. Nor can the push of charity 
or personal force ever be anything else than the profoundest 
reason, whether it brings argument to hand or no. No 
specification is necessary — to add or subtract or divide is 



Preface to '' Leaves of Grass " 209 

in vain. Little or big, learn'd or unlearn'd, white or black, 
legal or illegal, sick or well, from the first inspiration down 
the windpipe to the last expiration out of it, all that a male 
or female does that is vigorous and benevolent and clean 
is so much sure profit to him or her in the unshakable order 
of the universe, and through the whole scope of it forever. 
The prudence of the greatest poet answers at last the craving 
and glut of the soul, puts off nothing, permits no let-up 
for its own case or any case, has no particular sabbath or 
judgment day, divides not the living from the dead, or the 
righteous from the unrighteous, is satisfied with the present, 
matches every thought or act by its correlative, and knows 
no possible forgiveness or deputed atonement. 

The direct trial of him who would be the greatest poet 
is to-day. If he does not flood himself with the immediate 
age as with vast oceanic tides — if he be not himself the age 
transfigured, and if to him is not open'd the eternity which 
gives similitude to all periods and locations and processes, 
and animate and inanimate forms, and which is the bond 
of time, and rises up from its inconceivable vagueness and 
infiniteness in the swimming shapes of to-day, and is held 
by the ductile anchors of life, and makes the present spot 
the passage from what was to what shall be, and commits 
itself to the representation of this wave of an hour, and this 
one of the sixty beautiful children of the wave — let him 
merge in the general run, and wait his development. 

Still the final test of poems, or any character or work, 
remains. The prescient poet projects himself centuries 
ahead, and judges performer or performance after the 
changes of time. Does it live through them ? Does it 
still hold on untired? Will the same style, and the direction 
of genius to similar points, be satisfactory now? Have the 
marches of tens and hundreds and thousands of years made 
willing detours to the- right hand and the left hand for his 



210 American Essays 

sake? Is he beloved long and long after he is buried ? Does 
the young man think often of him? and the young woman 
think often of him ? and do the middle-aged and the old think 
of him? 

A great poem is for ages and ages in common, and for 
all degrees and complexions, and all departments and sects, 
and for a woman as much as a man, and a man as much as 
a woman. A great poem is no finish to a man or woman, 
but rather a beginning. Has anyone fancied he could sit 
at last under some due authority, and rest satisfied with 
explanations, and realize, and be content and full? To no 
such terminus does the greatest poet bring — he brings neither 
cessation nor shelter'd fatness and ease. The touch of him, 
like Nature, tells in action. Whom he takes he takes with 
firm sure grasp into live regions previously unattain'd — 
thenceforward is no rest — they see the space and ineffable 
sheen that turn the old spots and lights into dead vacuums. 
Now there shall be a man cohered out of tumult and chaos 
— the elder encourages the younger and shows him how — 
they two shall launch off fearlessly together till the new 
world fits an orbit for itself, and looks unabash'd on the 
lesser orbits of the stars, and sweeps through the ceaseless 
rings, and shall never be quiet again. 

There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done. 
A new order shall arise, and they shall be the priests of man, 
and every man shall be his own priest. They shall find 
their inspiration in real objects to-day, symptoms of the 
past and future. They shall not deign to defend immortality 
or God, or the perfection of things, or liberty, or the exquisite 
beauty and reality of the soul. They shall arise in America, 
and be responded to from the remainder of the earth. 

The English language befriends the grand American ex- 
pression — it is brawny enough, and limber and full enough. 
On the tough stock of a race who through all change of 



Preface to ''Leaves of Grass" 211 

circumstance was never without the idea of poUtical liberty, 
which is the animus of all liberty, it has attracted the terms 
of daintier and gayer and subtler and more elegant tongues. 
It is the powerful language of resistance — it is the dialect 
of common sense. It is the speech of the proud and melan- 
choly races, and of all who aspire. It is the chosen tongue 
to express growth, faith, self-esteem, freedom, justice, equal- 
ity, friendliness, amplitude, prudence, decision, and courage. 
It is the medium that shall wellnigh express the in- 
expressible. 

No great literature nor any like style of behavior or 
oratory, or social intercourse or household arrangements, 
or public institutions, or the treatment by bosses of em- 
ploy'd people, nor executive detail, or detail of the army 
and navy, nor spirit of legislation or courts, or police or 
tuition or architecture, or songs or amusements, can long 
elude the jealous and passionate instinct of American 
standards. Whether or no the sign appears from the mouths 
of the people, it throbs a live interrogation in every free- 
man's and freewoman's heart, after that which passes by, or 
this built to remain. Is it uniform with my country? Are 
its disposals without ignominious distinctions? Is it for 
the ever-growing communes of brothers and lovers, large, 
well united, proud, beyond the old models, generous beyond 
all models? Is it something grown fresh out of the fields, 
or drawn from the sea for use to me to-day here? I know 
that what answers for me, an American, in Texas, Ohio, 
Canada, must answer for any individual or nation that serves 
for a part of my materials. Does this answer? Is it for 
the nursing of the young of the republic? Does it solve 
readily with the sweet milk of the nipples of the breasts of 
the Mother of Many Children ? 

America prepares with composure and good-will for the 
visitors that have sent word. It is not intellect that is to 



212 American Essays 

be their warrant and welcome. The talented, the artist, 
the ingenious, the editor, the statesman, the erudite, are not 
unappreciated — they fall in their place and do their work. 
The soul of the nation also does its work. It rejects none, 
it permits all. Only toward the like of itself will it advance 
half-way. An individual is as superb as a nation when he 
has the qualities which make a superb nation. The soul of 
the largest and wealthiest and proudest nation may well go 
half-way to meet that of its poets. 



AMERICANISM IN LITERATURE 
Thomas Wentworth Higginson 

The voyager from Europe who lands upon our shores 
perceives a difference in the sky above his head ; the height 
seems loftier, the zenith more remote, the horizon-wall more 
steep ; the moon appears to hang in the middle air, beneath 
a dome that arches far beyond it. The sense of natural 
symbolism is so strong in us, that the mind seeks a spiritual 
significance in this glory of the atmosphere. It is not 
enough to find the sky enlarged, and not the mind, — caelum, 
non animum. One wishes to be convinced that here the 
intellectual man inhales a deeper breath, and walks with 
bolder tread; that philosopher and artist are here more 
buoyant, more fresh, more fertile ; that the human race has 
here escaped at one bound from the despondency of ages, 
as from their wrongs. 

And the true and healthy Americanism is to be found, 
let us believe, in this attitude of hope; an attitude not 
necessarily connected with culture nor with the absence' 
of culture, but with the consciousness of a new impulse 
given to all human progress. The most ignorant man may 
feel the full strength and heartiness of the American idea, 
and so may the most accomplished scholar. It is a matter 
of regret if thus far we have mainly had to look for our 
Americanism and our scholarship in very different quarters, 
and if it has been a rare delight to find the two in one. 

It seems unspeakably important that all persons among 
us, and especially the student and the writer, should be per- 

213 



214 American Essays 

vaded with Americanism. Americanism includes the faith 
that national self-government is not a chimera, but that, 
with whatever inconsistencies and drawbacks, we are stead- 
ily establishing it here. It includes the faith that to this 
good thing all other good things must in time be added. 
When a man is heartily imbued with such a national senti- 
ment as this, it is as marrow in his bones and blood in his 
veins. He may still need culture, but he has the basis of all 
culture. He is entitled to an imperturbable patience and 
hopefulness, born of a living faith. All that is scanty in our 
intellectual attainments, or poor in our artistic life, may 
then be cheerfully endured : if a man sees his house steadily 
rising on sure foundations, he can wait or let his children 
wait for the cornice and the frieze. But if one happens 
to be born or bred in America without this wholesome con- 
fidence, there is no happiness for him ; he has his alterna- 
tive between being unhappy at home and unhappy abroad ; 
it is a choice of martyrdoms for himself, and a certainty of 
martyrdom for his friends. 

Happily, there are few among our cultivated men in whom 
this oxygen of American life is wholly wanting. Where 
such exist, for them the path across the ocean is easy, and 
the return how hard! Yet our national character develops 
slowly ; we are aiming at something better than our English 
fathers, and we pay for it by greater vacillations and vibra- 
tions of movement. The Englishman's strong point is a 
vigorous insularity which he carries with him, portable and 
sometimes insupportable. The American's more perilous 
gift is a certain power of assimilation, so that he acquires 
something from every man he meets, but runs the risk 
of parting with something in return. For the result, greater 
possibilities of culture, balanced by greater extremes of 
sycophancy and meanness. Emerson says that the Eng- 
lishman of all men stands most firmly on his feet. But it 



Americanism in Literature 215 

is not the whole of man's mission to be found standing, 
even at the most important post. Let him take one step 
forward, — and in that advancing figure you have the 
American. 

We are accustomed to say that the war and its results 
have made us a nation, subordinated local distinctions, 
cleared us of our chief shame, and given us the pride of 
a common career. This being the case, we may afford 
to treat ourselves to a little modest self-confidence. Those 
whose faith in the American people carried them hopefully 
through the long contest with slavery will not be daunted 
before any minor perplexities of Chinese immigrants or 
railway brigands or enfranchised women. We are equal 
to these things; and we shall also be equal to the creation 
of a literature. We need intellectual culture inexpressibly, 
but we need a hearty faith still more. " Never yet was 
there a great migration that did not result in a new form 
of national genius." But we must guard against both 
croakers and boasters ; and above all, we must look beyond 
our little Boston or New York or Chicago or San Fran- 
cisco, and be willing citizens of the great Republic. 

The highest aim of most of our literary journals has thus 
far been to appear English, except where some diverging 
experimentalist has said, *' Let us be German," or " Let 
us be French." This was inevitable ; as inevitable as a boy's 
first imitations of Byron or Tennyson. But it necessarily 
implied that our literature must, during this epoch, be 
second-rate. We need to become national, not by any 
conscious effort, such as implies attitudinizing and con- 
straint, but by simply accepting our own life. It is not 
desirable to go out of one's way to be original, but it is 
to be hoped that it may lie in one's way. Originality is 
simply a fresh pair of eyes. If you want to astonish the 
whole world, said Rahel, tell the simple truth. It is easier 



2i6 American Essays 

to excuse a thousand defects in the Hterary man who pro- 
ceeds on this faith, than to forgive the one great defect 
of imitation in the purist who seeks only to be EngHsh. 
As Wasson has said, '' The Enghshman is undoubtedly a 
wholesome figure to the mental eye; but will not twenty 
million copies of him do, for the present?" We must 
pardon something to the spirit of liberty. We must run 
some risks, as all immature creatures do, in the effort to 
use our own limbs. Professor Edward Channing used to 
say that it was a bad sign for a college boy to write too 
well ; there should be exuberances and inequalities. A na- 
tion which has but just begun to create a literature must 
sow some wild oats. The most tiresome vaingloriousness 
may be more hopeful than hypercriticism and spleen. The 
follies of the absurdest spread-eagle orator may be far 
more promising, because they smack more of the soil, than 
the neat Londonism of the city editor who dissects him. 

It is but a few years since we have dared to be American 
in even the details and accessories of our literary work; 
to make our allusions to natural objects real not conven- 
tional; to ignore the nightingale and skylark, and look for 
the classic and romantic on our own soil. This change 
began mainly with Emerson. Some of us can recall the 
bewilderment with which his verses on the bumblebee, for 
instance, were received, when the choice of subject caused 
as much wonder as the treatment. It was called '' a foolish 
affectation of the familiar." Happily the atmosphere of dis- 
tance forms itself rapidly in a new land, and the poem has 
now as serene a place in literature as if Andrew Marvell 
had written it. The truly cosmopolitan writer is not he 
who carefully denudes his work of everything occasional 
and temporary, but he who makes his local coloring forever 
classic through the fascination of the dream it tells. Reason, 
imagination, passion, are universal; but sky, climate, cos- 



Americanism in Literature 217 

tume, and even type of human character, belong to some one 
spot alone till they find an artist potent enough to stamp 
their associations on the memory of all the world. Whether 
his work be picture or symphony, legend or lyric, is of 
little moment. The spirit of the execution is all in all. 

As yet, we Americans have hardly begun to think of the 
details of execution in any art. We do not aim at perfec- 
tion of detail even in engineering, much less in literature. 
In the haste of our national life, most of our intellectual 
work is done at a rush, is something inserted in the odd 
moments of the engrossing pursuit. The popular preacher 
becomes a novelist; the editor turns his paste-pot and scis- 
sors to the compilation of a history; the same man must 
be poet, wit, philanthropist, and genealogist. We find a 
sort of pleasure in seeing this variety of effort, just as the 
bystanders like to see a street-musician adjust every joint 
in his body to a separate instrument, and play a concerted 
piece with the whole of himself. To be sure, he plays each 
part badly, but it is such a wonder he should play them all ! 
Thus, in our rather hurried and helter-skelter training, the 
man is brilliant, perhaps ; his main work is well done ; but 
his secondary work is slurred. The book sells, no doubt, 
by reason of the author's popularity in other fields; it is 
only the tone of our national literature that suffers. There 
is nothing in American life that can make concentration 
cease to be a virtue. Let a man choose his pursuit, and 
make all else count for recreation only. Goethe's advice 
to Eckermann is infinitely more important here than it ever 
was in Germany : " Beware of dissipating your powers ; 
strive constantly to concentrate them. Genius thinks it can 
do whatever it sees others doing, but it is sure to repent 
of every ill-judged outlay." 

In one respect, however, this desultory activity is an ad- 
vantage : it makes men look in a variety of directions for 



2i8 American Essays 

a standard. As each sect in religion helps to protect us from 
some other sect, so every mental tendency is the limitation 
of some other. We need the English culture, but we do 
not need it more evidently than v^e need the German, the 
French, the Greek, the Oriental. In prose literature, for 
instance, the English contemporary models' are not enough. 
There is an admirable vigor and heartiness, a direct and 
manly tone ; King Richard still lives ; but Saladin also had 
his fine sword-play; let us see him. There are the delightful 
French qualities, — the atmosphere where literary art means 
fineness of touch. " Ou il n'y a point de deHcatesse, il n'y 
a point de litterature. Un ecrit ou ne se recontrent que 
de la force et un certain feu sans eclat n'annonce que le 
caractere." But there is something in the English climate 
which seems to turn the fine edge of any very choice 
scymitar till it cuts Saladin's own fingers at last. 

God forbid that I should disparage this broad Anglo- 
Saxon manhood which is the basis of our national life. 
I knew an American mother who sent her boy to Rugby 
School in England, in the certainty, as she said, that he 
w^ould there learn two things, — to play cricket and to speak 
the truth. He acquired both thoroughly, and she brought 
him home for what she deemed, in comparison, the orna- 
mental branches. We cannot spare the Englishman from 
our blood, but it is our business to make him more than an 
Englishman. That iron must become steel ; finer, harder, 
more elastic, more polished. For this end the English 
stock was transferred from an island to a continent, and 
mixed with new ingredients, that it might lose its quality 
of coarseness, and take a more delicate grain. 

As yet, it must be owned, this daring expectation is but 
feebly reflected in our books. In looking over any col- 
lection of American poetry, for instance, one is struck with 
the fact that it is not so much faulty as inadequate. Emer- 



Americanism in Literature 219 

son set free the poetic intuition of America, Hawthorne 
its imagination. Both looked into the realm of passion, 
Emerson with distrust, Hawthorne with eager interest ; 
but neither thrilled with its spell, and the American poet of 
passion is yet to come. How tame and manageable are 
wont to be the emotions of our bards, how placid and 
literary their allusions ! There is no baptism of fire ; n6 
heat that breeds excess. Yet it is not life that is grown 
dull, surely; there are as many secrets in every heart, as 
many skeletons in every closet, as in any elder period of 
the world's career. It is the interpreters of life who are 
found wanting, and that not on this soil alone, but through- 
out the Anglo-Saxon race. It is not just to say, as someone 
has said, that our language has not in this generation pro- 
duced a love-song, for it has produced Browning; but was 
it in England or in Italy that he learned to sound the depths 
of. all human emotion? 

And it is not to verse that this temporary check of ardor 
applies. It is often said that prose fiction now occupies the 
place held by the drama during the Elizabethan age. Cer- 
tainly this modern product shows something of the brilliant 
profusion of that wondrous flowering of genius; but here 
the resemblance ends. Where in our imaginative literature 
does one find the concentrated utterance, the intense and 
breathing life, the triumphs and despairs, the depth of 
emotion, the tragedy, the thrill, that meet one everywhere 
in those Elizabethan pages? What impetuous and com- 
manding men are these, what passionate women ; how they 
love and hate, struggle and endure; how they play with 
the world ; what a trail of fire they leave behind them as 
they pass by ! Turn now to recent fiction. Dickens's people 
are amusing and lovable, no doubt ; Thackeray's are wicked 
and witty; but how under-sized they look, and how they 
loiter on the mere surfaces of life, compared, I will not 



220 American Essays 

say with Shakespeare's, but even with Chapman's and 
Webster's men. Set aside Hawthorne in America, with 
perhaps Charlotte Bronte and George Ehot in England, and 
there would scarcely be a fact in prose literature to show 
that we modern Anglo-Saxons regard a profound human 
emotion as a thing worth the painting. Who now dares 
delineate a lover, except with good-natured pitying sar- 
casm, as in David Copperfield or Pendennis? In the 
Elizabethan period, with all its unspeakable coarseness, hot 
blood still ran in the veins of literature ; lovers burned 
and suffered and were men. And what was true of love 
was true of all the passions of the human soul. 

In this respect, as in many others, France has pre- 
served more of the artistic tradition. The common criti- 
cism, however, is, that in modern French literature, as in 
the Elizabethan, the play of feeling is too naked and obvious^ 
and that the Puritan self-restraint is worth more than all 
that dissolute wealth. I believe it ; and here comes in the 
intellectual worth of America. Puritanism was a phase, 
a discipline, a hygiene ; but we cannot remain always Puri- 
tans. The world needed that moral bracing, even for its 
art ; but after all, life is not impoverished by being ennobled ; 
and in a happier age, with a larger faith, we may again 
enrich ourselves with poetry and passion, while wearing 
that heroic girdle still around us. Then the next blossoming 
of the world's imagination need not bear within itself, like 
all the others, the seeds of an epoch of decay. 

I utterly reject the position taken by Matthew Arnold, 
that the Puritan spirit in America was essentially hostile 
to literature and art. Of course the forest pioneer cannot 
compose orchestral symphonies, nor the founder of a state 
carve statues. But the thoughtful and scholarly men who 
created the Massachusetts Colony brought with them the 
traditions of their universities, and left these embodied 



Americanism in Literature 221 

in a college. The Puritan life was only historically incon- 
sistent with culture; there was no logical antagonism. In- 
deed, that life had in it much that was congenial to art, 
in its enthusiasm and its truthfulness. Take these Puritan 
traits, employ them in a more genial sphere, add intellectual 
training and a sunny faith, and you have a soil suited 
to art above all others. To deny it is to see in art only 
something frivolous and insincere. The American writer 
in whom the artistic instinct was strongest came of un- 
mixed Puritan stock. Major John Hathorne, in 1692, put 
his offenders on trial, and generally convicted and hanged 
them all. Nathaniel Hawthorne held his more spiritual 
tribunal two centuries later, and his keener scrutiny found 
some ground of vindication for each one. The fidelity, 
the thoroughness, the conscientious purpose, were the same 
in each. Both sought to rest their work, as all art and 
all law must rest, upon the absolute truth. The writer 
kept, no doubt, something of the somberness of the mag- 
istrate ; each, doubtless, suffered in the woes he studied ; 
and as the one " had a knot of pain in his forehead all 
winter " while meditating the doom of Arthur Dimmesdale, 
so may the other have borne upon his own brow the trace 
of Martha Corey's grief. 

No, it does not seem to me that the obstacle to a new 
birth of literature and art in America lies in the Puritan 
tradition, but rather in the timid and faithless spirit that 
lurks in the circles of culture, and still holds something of 
literary and academic leadership in the homes of the Puri- 
tans. What are the ghosts of a myriad Blue Laws com- 
pared with the transplanted cynicism of one '' Saturday 
Review " ? How can any noble literature germinate where 
young men are habitually taught that there is no such 
thing as originality, and that nothing remains for us in 
this effete epoch of history but the mere recombining of 



22-2 American Essays 

thoughts which sprang first from braver brains? It is 
melancholy to see young men come forth from the college 
walls with less enthusiasm than they carried in; trained 
in a spirit which is in this respect worse than English 
toryism — that is, does not even retain a hearty faith in the 
past. It is better that a man should have eyes in the back 
of his head than that he should be taught to sneer at even 
a retrospective vision. One may believe that the golden 
age is behind us or before us, but alas for the forlorn wisdom 
of him who rejects it altogether! It is not the climax of 
culture that a college graduate should emulate the obituary 
praise bestowed by Cotton Mather on the Rev. John Mitchell 
of Cambridge, " a truly aged young man." Better a thou- 
sand times train a boy on Scott's novels or the Border 
Ballads than educate him to believe, on the one side, that 
chivalry was a cheat and the troubadours imbeciles, and 
on the other hand, that universal suffrage is an absurdity 
and the one real need is to get rid of our voters. A great 
crisis like a civil war brings men temporarily to their senses, 
and the young resume the attitude natural to their years, 
in spite of their teachers; but it is a sad thing when, in 
seeking for the generous impulses of youth, we have to turn 
from the public sentiment of the colleges to that of the 
workshops and the farms. 

It is a thing not to be forgotten, that for a long series 
of years the people of our Northern States were habitually 
in advance of their institutions of learning, in courage and 
comprehensiveness of thought. There were long years dur- 
ing which the most cultivated scholar, so soon as he em- 
braced an unpopular opinion, was apt to find the college 
doors closed against him, and only the country lyceum — 
the people's college — left open. Slavery had to be abolished 
before the most accomplished orator of the nation could 
be invited to address the graduates of his own university. 



Americanism in Literature 223 

The first among American scholars was nominated year 
after year, only to be rejected, before the academic socie- 
ties of his own neighborhood. Yet during all that time 
the rural lecture associations showered their invitations on 
Parker and Phillips; culture shunned them, but the com- 
mon people heard them gladly. The home of real thought 
was outside, not inside, the college walls. It hardly em- 
barrassed a professor's position if he defended slavery as 
a divine institution ; but he risked his place if he denounced 
the wrong. In those days, if by any chance a man of 
bold opinions drifted into a reputable professorship, we 
listened sadly to hear his voice grow faint. He usually 
began to lose his faith, his courage, his toleration, — in short, 
his Americanism, — when he left the ranks of the unin- 
structed. 

That time is past; and the literary class has now come 
more into sympathy with the popular heart. It is perhaps 
fortunate that there is as yet but little esprit de corps among 
our writers, so that they receive their best sympathy, not 
from each other, but from the people. Even the memory 
of our most original authors, as Thoreau, or Margaret 
Fuller Ossoli, is apt to receive its sharpest stabs from those 
of the same guild. When we American writers find grace 
to do our best, it is not so much because we are sustained 
by each other, as that we are conscious of a deep popular 
heart, slowly but surely answering back to ours, and offering 
a worthier stimulus than the applause of a coterie. If we 
once lose faith in our audience, the muse grows silent. Even 
the apparent indifference of this audience to culture and 
high finish may be in the end a wholesome influence, re- 
calling us to those more important things, compared to 
which these are secondary qualities. The indifference is 
only comparative ; our public prefers good writing, as it 
prefers good elocution ; but it values energy, heartiness, 



224 American Essays 

and action more. The public is right; it is the business of 
the writer, as of the speaker, to perfect the finer graces 
without sacrificing things more vital. " She was not a good 
singer," says some novelist of his heroine, " but she sang 
with an inspiration such as good .singers rarely indulge in." 
Given those positive qualities, and I think that a fine execu- 
tion does not hinder acceptance in America, but rather aids 
it. Where there is beauty of execution alone, a popular 
audience, even in America, very easily goes to sleep. And 
in such matters, as the French actor, Samson, said to the 
young dramatist, " sleep is an opinion." 

It takes more than grammars and dictionaries to make 
a literature. " It is the spirit in which we act that is the 
great matter," Goethe says. Der Geist aus dem wir handeln 
ist das Hochste. Technical training may give the negative 
merits of style, as an elocutionist may help a public. speaker 
by ridding him of tricks. But the positive force of writing 
or of speech must come from positive sources, — ardor, 
energy, depth of feeling or of thought. No instruction ever 
gave these, only the inspiration of a great soul, a great 
need, or a great people. We all know that a vast deal of 
oxygen may go into the style of a man; we see in it not 
merely what books he has read, what company he has kept, 
but also the food he eats, the exercise he takes, the air he 
breathes. And so there is oxygen in the collective literature 
of a nation, and this vital element proceeds, above all else, 
from liberty. For want of this wholesome oxygen, the 
voice of Victor Hugo comes to us uncertain and spasmodic, 
as of one in an alien atmosphere where breath is pain; for 
want of it, the eloquent English tones that at first sounded 
so clear and bell-like now reach us only faint and muffled, 
and lose their music day by day. It is by the presence of 
this oxygen that American literature is to be made great. 
We are lost if we permit this inspiration of our nation's 



Americanism in Literature 225 

life to sustain only the journalist and the stump-speaker, 
while we allow the colleges and the books to be choked 
with the dust of dead centuries and to pant for daily 
breath. 

Perhaps it may yet be found that the men who are con- 
tributing most to raise the tone of American literature are 
the men who have never yet written a book and have 
scarcely time to read one, but by their heroic energy in 
other spheres are providing exemplars for what our books 
shall one day be. The man who constructs a great me- 
chanical work helps literature, for he gives a model which 
shall one day inspire us to construct literary works as great. 
I do not wish to be forever outdone by the carpet-machinery 
of Clinton or the grain-elevators of Chicago. We have not 
yet arrived at our literature, — other things must come first ; 
we are busy with our railroads, perfecting the vast ali- 
mentary canal by which the nation assimilates raw immi- 
grants at the rate of half a milion a year. We are not yet 
producing, we are digesting : food now, literary composition 
by and by : Shakespeare did not write Hamlet at the 
dinner-table. It is of course impossible to explain this to 
foreigners, and they still talk of convincing, while we talk 
of dining. 

For one, I cannot dispense with the society which we call 
uncultivated. Democratic sympathies seem to be mainly a 
matter of vigor and health. It seems to be the first symp- 
tom of biliousness to think that only one's self and one's 
cousins are entitled to consideration and constitute the 
world. Every refined person is an aristocrat in his dys- 
peptic moments ; when hearty and well, he demands a wider 
range of sympathy. It is so tedious to live only in one circle 
and have only a genteel acquaintance ! Mrs. Trench, in her 
delightful letters, complains of the society in Dresden, about 
the year 1800, because of '' the impossibility, without over- 



226 American Essays 

stepping all bounds of social custom, of associating with 
any but noblesse." We order that matter otherwise in 
America. I wish not only to know my neighbor, the man 
of fashion, who strolls to his club at noon, but also my 
neighbor, the wheelwright, who goes to his dinner at the 
same hour. One would not wish to be unacquainted with 
the fair maiden who drives by in her basket-wagon in the 
afternoon; nor with the other fair maiden, who may be seen 
at her washtub in the morning. Both are quite worth 
knowing ; both are good, sensible, dutiful girls : the young 
laundress is the better mathematician, because she has gone 
through the grammar school; but the other has the better 
French accent, because she has spent half her life in Paris. 
They offer a variety, at least, and save from that monotony 
which besets any set of people when seen alone. There was 
much reason in Horace Walpole's coachman, who, having 
driven the maids of honor all his life, bequeathed his earn- 
ings to his son, on condition that he should never marry 
a maid of honor. 

I affirm that democratic society, the society of the future, 
enriches and does not impoverish human life, and gives 
more, not less, material for literary art. Distributing cul- 
ture through all classes, it diminishes class-distinction and 
develops individuality. Perhaps it is the best phenomenon 
of American life, thus far, that the word " gentleman," 
which in England still designates a social order, is here 
more apt to refer to personal character. When we describe 
a person as a gentleman, we usually refer to his manners, 
morals, and education, not to his property or birth; and 
this change alone is worth the transplantation across the 
Atlantic. The use of the word " lady " is yet more com- 
prehensive, and therefore more honorable still; we some- 
times see, in a shopkeeper's advertisement, " Saleslady 
wanted." No doubt the mere fashionable novelist loses 



Americanism in Literature 227 

terribly by the change : when all classes may wear the same 
dress-coat, what is left for him? But he who aims to depict 
passion and character gains in proportion ; his material is 
increased tenfold. The living realities of American life 
ought to come in among the tiresome lay-figures of average 
English fiction like Steven Lawrence into the London 
drawing-room : tragedy must resume its grander shape, and 
no longer turn on the vexed question whether the daughter 
of this or that matchmaker shall marry the baronet. It is 
the characteristic of a real book that, though the scene be 
laid in courts, their whole machinery might be struck out 
and the essential interest of the plot remain the same. In 
Auerbach's On the Heights, for instance, the social heights 
might be abolished and the moral elevation would be enough. 
The play of human emotion is a thing so absorbing, that 
the petty distinctions of cottage and castle become as noth- 
ing in its presence. Why not waive these small matters in 
advance, then, and go straight to the real thing? 

The greatest transatlantic successes which American 
novelists have yet attained — those won by Cooper and Mrs. 
Stowe — have come through a daring Americanism of sub- 
ject, which introduced in each case a new figure to the 
European world, — first the Indian, then the negro. What- 
ever the merit of the work, it was plainly the theme which 
conquered. Such successes are not easily to be repeated, 
for they were based on temporary situations never to recur. 
But they prepare the way for higher triumphs to be won 
by a profounder treatment, — the introduction into literature, 
not of new tribes alone, but of the American spirit. To 
analyze combinations of character that only our national 
life produces, to portray dramatic situations that belong to 
a clearer social atmosphere, — this is the higher American- 
ism. Of course, to cope with such themes in such a spirit is 
less easy than to describe a foray or a tournament, or to mul- 



228 American Essays 

tiply indefinitely such still-life pictures as the stereotyped 
English or French society affords ; but the thing when once 
done is incomparably nobler. It may be centuries before it is 
done : no matter. It will be done, and with it will come a 
similar advance along the whole line of literary labor, like the 
elevation which we have seen in the whole quality of scien- 
tific work in this country within the last twenty years. 

We talk idly about the tyranny of the ancient classics, 
as if there were some special peril about it, quite distinct 
from all other tyrannies. But if a man is to be stunted 
by the influence of a master, it makes no difference whether 
that master lived before or since the Christian epoch. One 
folio volume is as ponderous as another, if it crushes down 
the tender germs of thought. There is no great choice 
between the volumes of the Encyclopaedia. It is not im- 
portant to know whether a man reads Homer or Dante: 
the essential point is whether he believes the world to be 
young or old ; whether he sees as much scope for his own 
inspiration as if never a book had appeared in the world. 
So long as he does this, he has the American spirit: no 
books, no travel, can overwhelm him, for these will only 
enlarge his thoughts and raise his standard of execution. 
When he loses this faith, he takes rank among the copyists 
and the secondary, and no accident can raise him to a 
place among the benefactors of mankind. He is like a 
man who is frightened in battle: you cannot exactly blame 
him, for it may be an aifair of the temperament or of the 
digestion; but you are glad to let him drop to the rear, 
and to close up the ranks. Fields are won by those who 
believe in the winning. 



[From Americanism in Literature. Copyright, 1871, by James R. 
Osgood & Co.] 



THACKERAY IN AMERICA 
George William Curtis 

Mr. Thackeray's visit at least demonstrates that if we 
are unwilling to pay English authors for their books, we 
are ready to reward them handsomely for the opportunity 
of seeing and hearing them. If Mr. Dickens, instead of 
dining at other people's expense, and making speeches at his 
own, when he came to see us, had devoted an evening or 
two in the week to lecturing, his purse would have been 
fuller, his feelings sweeter, and his fame fairer. It was a 
Quixotic crusade, that of the Copyright, and the excel- 
lent Don has never forgiven the windmill that broke his 
spear. 

Undoubtedly, when it was ascertained that Mr. Thack- 
eray was coming, the public feeling on this side of the sea 
was very much divided as to his probable reception. " He'll 
come and humbug us, eat our dinners, pocket our money, 
and go home and abuse us, like that unmitigated snob 
Dickens," said Jonathan, chafing with the remembrance 
of that grand ball at the Park Theater and the Boz tableaux, 
and the universal wining and dining, to which the distin- 
guished Dickens was subject while he was our guest. 

'' Let him have his say," said others, '' and we will have 
our look. We will pay a dollar to hear him, if we can see 
him at the same time; and as for the abuse, why, it takes 
even more than two such cubs of the roaring British Lion 
to frighten the American Eagle. Let him come, and give 
him fair play." 

229 



230 American Essays 

He did come, and had fair play, and returned to England 
with a comfortable pot of gold holding $12,000, and with 
the hope and promise of seeing us again in September, 
to discourse of something not less entertaining than the 
witty men and sparkling times of Anne. We think there 
was no disappointment with his lectures. Those who knew 
his books found the author in the lecturer. Those who did 
not know his books were charmed in the lecturer by what 
is charming in the author — the unaffected humanity, the 
tenderness, the sweetness, the genial play of fancy, and the 
sad touch of truth, with that glancing stroke of satire which, 
lightning-like, illumines while it withers. The lectures were 
even more delightful than the books, because the tone of 
the voice and the appearance of the man, the general per- 
sonal magnetism, explained and alleviated so much that 
would otherwise have seemed doubtful or Unfair. For 
those who had long felt in the writings of Thackeray a 
reality quite inexpressible, there was a secret delight in find- 
ing it justified in his speaking; for he speaks as he writes — 
simply, directly, without flourish, without any cant of ora- 
tory, commending what he says by its intrinsic sense, and 
the sympathetic and humane way in which it was spoken. 
Thackeray is the kind of " stump orator " that would have 
pleased Carlyle. He never thrusts himself between you 
and his thought. If his conception of the time and his 
estimate of the men differ from your own, you have at 
least no doubt what his view is, nor how sincere and neces- 
sary it is to him. Mr. Thackeray considers Swift a misan- 
thrope ; he loves Goldsmith and Steele and Harry Fielding ; 
he has no love for Sterne, great admiration for Pope, and 
alleviated admiration for Addison. How could it be other- 
wise? How could Thackeray not think Swift a misanthrope 
and Sterne a factitious sentimentalist ? He is a man of 
instincts, not of thoughts : he sees and feels. He would be 



Thackeray in America 231 

Shakespeare's call-boy, rather than dine with the Dean 
of St. Patrick's. He would take a pot of ale with Gold- 
smith, rather than a glass of burgundy with the " Reverend 
Mr. Sterne," and that simply because he is Thackeray. He 
would have done it as Fielding would have done it, be- 
cause he values one genuine emotion above the most dazzling 
thought ; because he is, in fine, a Bohemian, '' a minion of 
the moon," a great, sweet, generous heart. 

We say this with more unction now that we have per- 
sonal proof of it in his public and private intercourse while 
he was here. 

The popular Thackeray-theory, before his arrival, was 
of a severe satirist, who concealed scalpels in his sleeves 
and carried probes in his waistcoat pockets ; a wearer of 
masks; a scoflfer and sneerer, and general infidel of all 
high aims and noble character. Certainly we are justified 
in saying that his presence among us quite corrected this 
idea. We welcomed a friendly, genial man ; not at all con- 
vinced that speech is heaven's first law, but willing to be 
silent when there is nothing to say; who decidedly refused 
to be lionized — not by sulking, but by stepping off the 
pedestal and challenging the common sympathies of all he 
met ; a man who, in view of the thirty-odd editions of Martin 
Farquhar Tupper, was willing to confess that every author 
should '' think small-beer of himself." Indeed, he has this 
rare quality, that his personal impression deepens, in kind, 
that of his writings. The quiet and comprehensive grasp 
of the fact, and the intellectual impossibility of holding fast 
anything but the fact, is as manifest in the essayist upon 
the wits as in the author of Henry Esmond and Vanity 
Fair. Shall we say that this is the sum of his power, and 
the secret of his satire? It is not what might be, nor 
what we or other persons of well-regulated minds might 
wish, but it is the actual state of things that he sees and 



232 American Essays 

describes. How, then, can he help what we call satire, if 
he accept Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's invitation and describe 
her party? There was no more satire in it, so far as he is 
concerned, than in painting lilies white. ^ A full-length por- 
trait of the fair Lady Beatrix, too, must needs show a gay 
and vivid figure, superbly glittering across the vista of those 
stately days. Then, should Dab and Tab, the eminent critics, 
step up and demand that her eyes be a pale blue, and her 
stomacher higher around the neck ? Do Dab and Tab expect 
to gather pears from peach-trees ? Or, because their theory 
of dendrology convinces them that an ideal fruit-tree would 
supply any fruit desired upon application, do they denounce 
the non-pear-bearing peach-tree in the columns of their valu- 
able journal? This is the drift of the fault found with 
Thackeray. He is not Fenelon, he is not Dickens, he is not 
Scott ; he is not poetical, he is not ideal, he is not humane ; 
he is not Tit, he is not Tat, complain the eminent Dabs 
and Tabs. Of course he is not, because he is Thackeray — a 
man who describes what he sees, motives as well as appear- 
ances — a man who believes that character is better than 
talent — that there is a worldly weakness superior to worldly 
wisdom — that Dick Steele may haunt the ale-house and be 
carried home muzzy, and yet be a more commendable char- 
acter than the reverend Dean of St. Patrick's, who has 
genius enough to illuminate a century, but not sympathy 
enough to sweeten a drop of beer. And he represents this 
in a way that makes us see it as he does, and without exag- 
geration ; for surely nothing could be more simple than his 
story of the life of '' honest Dick Steele." H he allotted 
to that gentleman a consideration disproportioned to the 
space he occupies in literary history, it only showed the 
more strikingly how deeply the writer-lecturer's sympathy 
was touched by Steele's honest humanity. 

An article in our April number complained that the tend- 



Thackeray in America 233 

ency of his view of Anne's times was to a social laxity, 
which might be very exhilarating but was very dangerous ; 
that the lecturer's warm commendation of fermented drinks, 
taken at a very early hour of the morning in tavern-rooms 
and club houses, was as deleterious to the moral health of 
enthusiastic young readers disposed to the literary life as 
the beverage itself to their physical health. 

But this is not a charge to be brought against Thackeray. 
It is a quarrel with history and with the nature of literary 
life. Artists and authors have always been the good fel- 
lows of the world. That mental organization which pre- 
disposes a man to the pursuit of literature and art is made 
up of talent combined with ardent social sympathy, geniality, 
and passion, and leads him to taste every cup and try every 
experience. There is certainly no essential necessity that 
this class should be a dissipated and disreputable class, but 
by their very susceptibility to enjoyment they will always 
be the pleasure lovers and seekers. And here is the social 
compensation to the literary man for the surrender of those 
chances of fortune which men of other pursuits enjoy. 
If he makes less money, he makes more juice out of what 
he does make. If he cannot drink burgundy he can quaff 
the nut-brown ale ; while the most brilliant wit, the most 
salient fancy, the sweetest sympathy, the most genial cul- 
ture, shall sparkle at his board more radiantly than a silver 
service, and give him the spirit of the tropics and the Rhine, 
whose fruits are on other tables. The golden light that 
transfigures talent and illuminates the world, and which we 
call genius, is erratic and erotic ; and while in Milton it is 
austere, and in Wordsworth cool, and in Southey method- 
ical, in Shakespeare it is fervent, with all the results of 
fervor; in Raphael lovely, with all the excesses of love; 
in Dante moody, with all the whims of caprice. The old 
quarrel of Lombard Street with Grub Street is as profound 



234 American Essays 

as that of Osiris and Typho — it is the difference of sympa- 
thy. The Marquis of Westminster will take good care 
that no superfluous shilhng escapes. OUver Goldsmith will 
still spend his last shilling upon a brave and unnecessary 
banquet to his friends. 

Whether this be a final fact of human organization or not, 
it is certainly a fact of history. Every man instinctively 
believes that Shakespeare stole deer, just as he disbelieves 
that Lord-mayor Whittington ever told a lie ; and the secret 
of that instinct is the consciousness of the difference in 
organization. " Knave, I have the power to hang ye," says 
somebody in one of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays. " And I 
do be hanged and scorn ye," is the airy answer. " I had 
a pleasant hour the other evening," said a friend to us, 
''over my cigar and a book." ''What book was that?" 
" A treatise conclusively proving the awful consequences of 
smoking." De Quincey came up to London and declared 
war upon opium; but during a little amnesty, in which he 
lapsed into his old elysium, he wrote his best book depicting 
its horrors. 

Our readers will not imagine that we are advocating the 
claims of drunkenness nor defending social excess. We 
are only recognizing a fact and stating an obvious tendency. 
The most brilliant illustrations of every virtue are to be 
found in the literary guild, as well as the saddest beacons 
of warning; yet it will often occur that the last in 
talent and the first in excess of a picked company will 
be a man around whom sympathy most kindly lingers. 
We love Goldsmith more at the head of an ill-advised feast 
than Johnson and his friends leaving it, thoughtful and 
generous as their conduct was. The heart despises 
prudence. 

In the single-hearted regard we know that pity has a larger 
share. Yet it is not so much that pity which is commisera- 



Thackeray in America 235 

tion for misfortune and deficiency, as that which is recogni- 
tion of a necessary worldly ignorance. The literary class 
is the most innocent of all. The contempt of practical men 
for the poets is based upon a consciousness that they are 
not bad enough for a bad world. To a practical man noth- 
ing is so absurd as the lack of worldly shrewdness. The 
very complaint of the literary life that it does not amass 
wealth and live in palaces is the scorn of the practical man, 
for he cannot understand that intellectual opacity which 
prevents the literary man from seeing the necessity of the 
different pecuniary condition. It is clear enough to the 
publisher who lays up fifty thousand a year why the author 
ends the year in debt. But the author is amazed that he 
who deals in ideas can only dine upon occasional chops, 
while the man who merely binds and sells ideas sits down 
to perpetual sirloin. If they should change places, fortune 
would change with them. The publisher turned author 
would still lay up his thousands; the publishing author 
would still directly lose thousands. It is simply because it 
is a matter of prudence, economy, and knowledge of the 
world. Thomas Hood made his ten thousand dollars a 
year, but if he lived at the rate of fifteen thousand he would 
hardly die rich. Mr. Jerdan, a gentleman who, in his 
Autobiography, advises energetic youth to betake themselves 
to the highway rather than to literature, was, we understand, 
in the receipt of an easy income, and was a welcome guest 
in pleasant houses; but living in a careless, shiftless, ex- 
travagant way, he was presently poor, and, instead of giving 
his memoirs the motto, peccavi, and inditing a warning, he 
dashes off a truculent defiance. Practical publishers and 
practical men of all sorts invest their earnings in Michigan 
Central or Cincinnati and Dayton instead, in steady works 
and devoted days, and reap a pleasant harvest of dividends. 
Our friends the authors invest in prime Havanas, Rhenish, 



236 American Essays 

in oyster suppers, love and leisure, and divide a heavy 
percentage of headache, dyspepsia, and debt. 

This is as true a view, from another point, as the one 
we have already taken. If the literary life has the pleasures 
of freedom, it has also its pains. It may be willing to resign 
the queen's drawing-room, with the illustrious galaxy of 
stars and garters, for the chamber with a party nobler than 
the nobility. The author's success is of a wholly different 
kind from that of the publisher, and he is thoughtless who 
demands both. Mr. Roe, who sells sugar, naturally com- 
plains that Mr. Doe, who sells molasses, makes money more 
rapidly. But Mr. Tennyson, who writes poems, can hardly 
make the same complaint of Mr. Moxon, who publishes 
them, as was very fairly shown in a number of the West- 
minster Review, when noticing Mr. Jerdan's book. 

What we have said is strictly related to Mr. Thackeray's 
lectures, which discuss literature. All the men he com- 
memorated were illustrations and exponents of the career 
of letters. They all, in various ways, showed the various 
phenomena of the temperament. And when in treating 
of them the critic came to Steele, he found one who was one 
of the most striking illustrations of one of the most uni- 
versal aspects of literary life — the simple-hearted, unsuspi- 
cious, gay gallant and genial gentleman; ready with his 
sword or his pen, with a smile or a tear, the fair repre- 
sentative of the social tendency of his life. It seems to us 
that the Thackeray theory — the conclusion that he is a 
man who loves to depict madness, and has no sensibilities 
to the finer qualities of character — crumbled quite away be- 
fore that lecture upon Steele. We know that it was not 
considered the best; we know that many of the delighted 
audience were not sufficiently familiar with literary history 
fully to understand the position of the man in the lecturer's 
review; but, as a key to Thackeray, it was, perhaps, the 



Thackeray in America 237 

most valuable of all. We know in literature of no more 
gentle treatment; we have not often encountered in men 
of the most rigorous and acknowledged virtue such humane 
tenderness ; we have not often heard from the most clerical 
lips words of such genuine Christianity. Steele's was a 
character which makes weakness amiable: it was a weak- 
ness, if you will, but it was certainly amiability, and it was 
a combination more attractive than many full-panoplied ex- 
cellences. It was not presented as a model. Captain Steele 
in the tap-room was not painted as the ideal of virtuous man- 
hood; but it certainly was intimated that many admirable 
things were consonant with a free use of beer. It was 
frankly stated that if, in that character, virtue abounded, 
cakes and ale did much more abound. Captain Richard 
Steele might have behaved much better than he did, but 
we should then have never heard of him. A few fine essays 
do not float a man into immortality, but the generous char- 
acter, the heart sweet in all excesses and under all chances, 
is a spectacle too beautiful and too rare to be easily for- 
gotten. A man is better than many books. Even a man 
who is not immaculate may have more virtuous influence 
than the discreetest saint. Let us remember how fondly 
the old painters lingered round the story of Magdalen, and 
thank Thackeray for his full-length Steele. 

We conceive this to be the chief result of Thackeray's 
visit, that he convinced us of his intellectual integrity; 
he showed us how impossible it is for him to see the world 
and describe it .other than he does. He does not profess 
cynicism, nor satirize society with malice; there is no man 
more humble, none more simple; his interests are human 
and concrete, not abstract. We have already said that he 
looks through and through at the fact. It is easy enough, 
and at some future time it will be done, to deduce the pecu- 
liarity of his writings from the character of his mind. 



238 , American Essays 

There is no man who masks so little as he in assuming the 
author. His books are his observations reduced to writing. 
It seems to us as singular to demand that Dante should 
be like Shakespeare as to quarrel with Thackeray's want 
of what is called ideal portraiture. Even if you thought, 
from reading his Vanity Fair, that he had no conception of 
noble women, certainly after the lecture upon Swift, after all 
the lectures, in which every allusion to women was so manly 
and delicate and sympathetic, you thought so no longer. 
It is clear that his sympathy is attracted to women — to that 
which is essentially womanly, feminine. Qualities com- 
mon to both sexes do not necessarily charm him because 
he finds them in women. A certain degree of goodness must 
always be assumed. It is only the rare flowering that in- 
spires special praise. You call Amelia's fondness for George 
Osborne foolish, fond idolatry. Thackeray smiles, as if 
all love were not idolatry of the fondest foolishness. What 
was Hero's — what was Francesca da Rimini's — what was 
Juliet's ? They might have been more brilliant women than 
Amelia, and their idols of a larger mold than George, but 
the love was the same old foolish, fond idolatry. The 
passion of love and a profound and sensible knowledge, 
regard based upon prodigious knowledge of character and 
appreciation of talent, are different things. What is the 
historic and poetic splendor of love but the very fact, which 
constantly appears in Thackeray's stories, namely, that it is 
a glory which dazzles and blinds. Men rarely love the 
women they ought to love, according to the ideal standards. 
It is this that makes the plot and mystery of life. Is it not 
the perpetual surprise of all Jane's friends that she should 
love Timothy instead of Thomas ? and is not the courtly and 
accomplished Thomas sure to surrender to some accidental 
Lucy without position, wealth, style, worth, culture — with- 
out anything but heart? This is the fact, and it reappears 



I 



Thackeray in America 239 

in Thackeray, and it gives his books that air of reality which 
they possess beyond all modern story. 

And it is this single perception of the fact which, simple 
as it is, is the rarest intellectual quality that made his lectures 
so interesting. The sun rose again upon the vanished cen- 
tury, and lighted those historic streets. The wits of Queen 
Anne ruled the hour, and we were bidden to their feast. 
Much reading of history and memoirs had not so sent the 
blood into those old English cheeks, and so moved those 
limbs in proper measure, as these swift glances through 
the eyes of genius. It was because, true to himself, Thack- 
eray gave us his impression of those wits as men rather 
than authors. For he loves character more than thought. 
He is a man of the world, and not a scholar. He interprets 
the author by the man. When you are made intimate with 
young Swift, Sir William Temple's saturnine secretary, you 
more intelligently appreciate the Dean of St. Patrick's. 
When the surplice of Mr. Sterne is raised a little, more 
is seen than the reverend gentleman intends. Hogarth, the 
bluff Londoner, necessarily depicts a bluff, coarse, obvious 
morality. The hearty Fielding, the cool Addison, the genial 
Goldsmith, these are the figures that remain in memory, 
and their works are valuable as they indicate the man. 

Mr. Thackeray's success was very great. He did not 
visit the West, nor Canada. He went home without seeing 
Niagara Falls. But wherever he did go he found a gen- 
erous and social welcome, and a respectful and sympa- 
thetic hearing. He came to fulfill no mission, but he cer- 
tainly knit more closely our sympathy with Englishmen. 
Heralded by various romantic memoirs, he smiled at them, 
stoutly asserted that he had been always able to command 
a good dinner, and to pay for it; nor did he seek to dis- 
guise that he hoped his American tour would help him to 
command and pay for more. He promised not to write 



240 American Essays 

a book about us, but we hope he will, for we can ill spare 
the criticism of such an observer. At least, we may be sure 
that the material gathered here w.ill be worked up in some 
way. He found that we were not savages nor bores. He 
found that there were a hundred here for every score in 
England who knew well and loved the men of whom he 
spoke. He found that the same red blood colors all the 
lips that speak the language he so nobly praised. He found 
friends instead of critics. He found those who, loving 
the author, loved the man more. He found a quiet wel- 
come from those who are waiting to welcome him again 
and as sincerely. 



[From Literary and Social Essays, by George William Curtis. Copy- 
right, 1894, by Harper & Brothers.] 



OUR MARCH TO WASHINGTON 
Theodore Winthrop 

through the city 

At three o'clock in the afternoon of Friday, April 19, we 
took our peacemaker, a neat twelve-pound brass howitzer, 
down from the Seventh Regiment Armory, and stationed it 
in the rear of the building. The twin peacemaker is some- 
where near us, but entirely hidden by this enormous crowd. 

An enormous crowd! of both sexes, of every age and 
condition. The men offer all kinds of truculent and pa- 
triotic hopes ; the women shed tears, and say, '' God bless 
you, boys ! " 

This is a part of the town where baddish cigars prevail. 
But good or bad, I am ordered to keep all away from the 
gun. So the throng stands back, peers curiously over the 
heads of its junior members, and seems to be taking the 
measure of my coffin. 

After a patient hour of this, the word is given, we fall 
in, our two guns find their places at the right of the line 
of march, we move on through the thickening crowd. 

At a great house on the left, as we pass the Astor 
Library, I see a handkerchief waving for me. Yes ! it is 
she who made the sandwiches in my knapsack. They were 
a trifle too thick, as I afterwards discovered, but otherwise 
perfection. Be these my thanks and the thanks of hungry 
comrades who had bites of them! 

At the corner of Great Jones Street we halted for half 

241 



242 American Essays 

an hour, — then, everything ready, we marched down 
Broadway. 

It was worth a life, that march. Only one who passed, 
as we did, through that tempest of cheers, two miles long, 
can know the terrible enthusiasm of the occasion. I could 
hardly hear the rattle of our own gun-carriages, and only 
once or twice the music of our band came to me muffled 
and quelled by the uproar. We knew now, if we had not 
before divined it, that our great city was with us as one 
man, utterly united in the great cause we were marching 
to sustain. 

This grand fact I learned by two senses. If hundreds 
of thousands roared it intO' my ears, thousands slapped 
it into my back. My fellow-citizens smote me on the knap- 
sack, as I went by at the gun-rope, and encouraged me each 
in his own dialect. '* Bully for you ! " alternated with 
benedictions, in the proportion of two '' bullies " to one 
blessing. 

I was not so fortunate as to receive more substantial 
tokens of sympathy. But there were parting gifts showered 
on the regiment, enough to establish a variety-shop. Hand- 
kerchiefs, of course, came floating down upon us from 
the windows, like a snow. Pretty little gloves pelted us 
with love-taps. The sterner sex forced upon us pocket- 
knives new and jagged, combs, soap, slippers, boxes of 
matches, cigars by the dozen and the hundred, pipes to 
smoke shag and pipes to smoke Latakia, fruit, eggs, and 
sandwiches. One fellow got a new purse with ten bright 
quarter-eagles. 

At the corner of Grand Street, or thereabouts, a " bhoy " 
in red flannel shirt and black dress pantaloons, leaning back 
against the crowd with Herculean shoulders, called me, — 
" Saay, bully ! take my dorg ! he's one of the kind that holds 
till he draps." This gentleman, with his animal, was in- 



Our March to Washington 243 

stantly shoved back by the poHce, and the Seventh lost the 
"dorg." 

These were the comic incidents of the march, but under- 
lying all was the tragic sentiment that we might have tragic 
work presently to do. The news of the rascal attack in 
Baltimore on the Massachusetts Sixth had just come in. 
Ours might be the same chance. If there were any of us 
not in earnest before, the story of the day would steady 
us. So we said good-by to Broadway, moved down Cort- 
landt Street under a bower of flags, and at half-past six 
shoved off in the ferry-boat. 

Everybody has heard how Jersey City turned out and 
filled up the Railroad Station, like an opera-house, to give 
God-speed to us as a representative body, a guaranty of 
the unquestioning loyalty of the " conservative " class in 
New York. Everybody, has heard how the State of New 
Jersey, along the railroad line, stood through the evening 
and the night to shout their quota of good wishes. At 
every station the Jerseymen were there, uproarious as Jer- 
seymen, to shake our hands and wish us a happy despatch. 
I think I did not see a rod of ground without its man, from 
dusk till dawn, from the Hudson to the Delaware. 

Upon the train we made a jolly night of it. All knew 
that the more a man sings, the better he is likely to fight. 
So we sang more than we slept, and, in fact, that has been 
our history ever since. 

PHILADELPHIA 

At sunrise we were at the station in Philadelphia, and dis- 
missed for an hour. Some hundreds of us made up Broad 
Street for the Lapierre House to breakfast. When I ar- 
rived, I found every place at table filled and every waiter 
ten deep with orders. So, being an old campaigner, I fol- 



244 American Essays 

lowed up the stream of provender to the fountain-head, the 
kitchen. Half a dozen other old campaigners were already 
there, most hospitably entertained by the cooks. They 
served us, hot and hot, with the best of their best, straight 
from the gridiron and the pan. I hope, if I live to break- 
fast again in the Lapierre House, that I may be allowed 
to help myself and choose for myself below-stairs. 

When we rendezvoused at the train, we found that the 
orders were for every man to provide himself three days' 
rations in the neighborhood, and be ready for a start at 
a moment's notice. 

A mountain of bread was already piled up in the station. 
I stuck my bayonet through a stout loaf, and, with a dozen 
comrades armed in the same way, went foraging about for 
other vivers. 

It is a poor part of Philadelphia ; but whatever they had 
in the shops or the houses seemed to be at our disposition. 

I stopped at a corner shop to ask for pork, and was 
amicably assailed by an earnest dame, — Irish, I am pleased 
to say. She thrust her last loaf upon me, and sighed that 
it was not baked that morning for my " honor's service." 

A little farther on, two kindly Quaker ladies compelled 
me to step in. " What could they do?" they asked eagerly. 
" They had no meat in the house ; but could we eat eggs ? 
They had in the house a dozen and a half, new-laid." So 
the pot to the fire, and the eggs boiled, and bagged by myself 
and that tall Saxon, my friend E., of the Sixth Company. 
While the eggs simmered, the two ladies thee-ed us prayer- 
fully and tearfully, hoping that God would save our country 
from blood, unless blood must be shed to preserve Law 
and Liberty. 

Nothing definite from Baltimore when we returned to 
the station. We stood by, waiting orders. About noon the 
Eighth Massachusetts Regiment took the train southward. 



Our March to Washington 245 

Our regiment was ready to a man to try its strength with 
the Plug UgHes. If there had been any voting on the 
subject, the plan to follow the straight road to Washington 
would have been accepted by acclamation. But the higher 
powers deemed that '' the longest way round was the shortest 
way home," and no doubt their decision was wise. The 
event proved it. 

At two o'clock came the word to '' fall in." We handled 
our howitzers again, and marched down Jefferson Avenue 
to the steamer " Boston " to embark. 

To embark for what port? For Washington, of course, 
finally; but by what route? That was to remain in doubt 
to us privates for a day or two. 

The " Boston " is a steamer of the outside line from 
Philadelphia to New York. She just held our legion. We 
tramped on board, and were allotted about the craft from 
the top to the bottom story. We took tents, traps, and 
grub on board, and steamed away down the Delaware in 
the sweet afternoon of April. If ever the heavens smiled 
fair weather on any campaign, they have done so on ours. 

THE " BOSTON " 

Soldiers on shipboard are proverbially fish out of water. 
We could not be called by the good old nickname of " lob- 
sters " by the crew. Our gray jackets saved the sobriquet. 
But we floundered about the crowded vessel like boiling 
victims in a pot. At last we found our places, and laid 
ourselves about the decks to tan or bronze or burn scarlet, 
according to complexion. There were plenty of cheeks of 
lobster-hue before next evening on the '' Boston." 

A thousand young fellows turned loose on shipboard were 
sure to make themselves merry. Let the reader imagine 
that! We were like any other excursionists, except that 



246 American Essays 

the stacks of bright guns were always present to remind 
us of our errand, and regular guard-mounting and drill 
went on all the time. The young citizens growled or 
laughed at the minor hardships of the hasty outfit, and 
toughened rapidly to business. 

Sunday, the 21st, was a long and somewhat anxious day. 
While we were bowling along in the sweet sunshine and 
sweeter moonlight of the halcyon time, Uncle Sam might 
be dethroned by somebody in buckram, or Baltimore burnt 
by the boys from Lynn or Marblehead, revenging the mas- 
sacre of their fellows. Everyone begins to comprehend the 
fiery eagerness of men who live in historic times. '' I wish 
I had control of chain-lightning for a few minutes," 
says O., the droll fellow of our company. '' I'd make 
it come thick and heavy and knock spots out of Seces- 
sion." 

At early dawn of Monday, the 22d, after feeling along 
slowly all night, we see the harbor of Annapolis. A frigate 
with sails unbent lies at anchor. She flies the stars and 
stripes. Hurrah ! 

A large steamboat is aground farther in. As soon as we 
can see anything, we catch the glitter of bayonets on board. 

By and by boats come off, and we get news that the 
steamer is the '' Maryland," a ferry-boat of the Philadelphia 
and Baltimore Railroad. The Massachusetts Eighth Regi- 
ment had been just in time to seize her on the north side 
of the Chesapeake. They learned that she was to be car- 
ried off by the crew and leave them blockaded. So they 
shot their Zouaves ahead as skirmishers. The fine fellows 
rattled on board, and before the steamboat had time to take 
a turn or open a valve, she was held by Massachusetts in 
trust for Uncle Sam. Hurrah for the most important prize 
thus far in the war ! It probably saved the '' Constitution," 
'' Old Ironsides," from capture by the traitors. It probably 



Our March to Washington 247 

saved Annapolis, and kept Maryland open without blood- 
shed. 

As soon as the Massachusetts Regiment had made prize 
of the ferry-boat, a call was made for engineers to run her. 
Some twenty men at once stepped to the front. We of the 
New York Seventh afterwards concluded that whatever 
was needed in the way of skill or handicraft could be 
found among those brother Yankees. They were the men 
to make armies of. They could tailor for themselves, shoe 
themselves, do their own blacksmithing, gun-smithing, and 
all other work that calls for sturdy arms and nimble fingers. 
In fact, I have such profound confidence in the universal 
accomplishment of the Massachusetts Eighth, that I have 
no doubt, if the order were, '* Poets to the front ! " '' Paint- 
ers present arms ! " '' Sculptors charge bayonets ! " a baker's 
dozen out of every company would respond. 

Well, to go on with their story, — when they had taken 
their prize, they drove her straight downstream to An- 
napolis, the nearest point to Washington. There they found 
the Naval Academy in danger of attack, and " Old Iron- 
sides " — serving as a practice-ship for the future midship- 
men — also exposed. The call was now for seamen to man 
the old craft and save her from a worse enemy than her pro- 
totype met in the *' Guerriere." Seamen? Of course! They 
were Marbleheaded men, Gloucester men, Beverly men, sea- 
men all, par excellence! They clapped on the frigate to 
aid the middies, and by and by started her out into the 
stream. In doing this their own pilot took the chance to 
run them purposely on a shoal in the intricate channel. A 
great error of judgment on his part! as he perceived, when 
he found himself in irons and in confinement. " The days 
of trifling with traitors are over ! " think the Eighth Regi- 
ment of Massachusetts. 

But there they were, hard and fast on the shoal, when 



248 American Essays 

we came up. Nothing to nibble on but knobs of anthracite. 
Nothing to sleep on softer or cleaner than coal-dust. Noth- 
ing to drink but the brackish water under their keel. 
'' Rather rough ! " so they afterward patiently told us. 

Meantime the " Constitution " had got hold of a tug, and 
was making her way to an anchorage where her guns com- 
manded everything and everybody. Good and true men 
chuckled greatly over this. The stars and stripes also were 
still up at the fort at the Naval Academy. 

Our dread, that, while we were off at sea, some great 
and perhaps fatal harm had been suffered, was greatly 
lightened by these good omens. If Annapolis was safe, 
why not Washington safe also? If treachery had got head 
at the capital, would not treachery have reached out its 
hand and snatched this doorway? These were our specula- 
tions as we began to discern objects, before we heard news. 

But news came presently. Baats pulled off to us. Our 
officers were put into communication with the shore. The 
scanty facts of our position became known from man to 
man. We privates have greatly the advantage in battling 
with the doubt of such a time. We know that we have 
nothing to do with rumors. Orders are what we go by. 
And orders are Facts. 

We lay a long, lingering day, off Annapolis. The air was 
full of doubt, and we were eager to be let loose. All this 
while the '' Maryland " stuck fast on the bar. We could see 
them, half a mile off, making every effort to lighten her. 
The soldiers tramped forward and aft, danced on her decks, 
shot overboard a heavy baggage-truck. We saw them start 
the truck for the stern with a cheer. It crashed down. One 
end stuck in the mud. The other fell back and rested on 
the boat. They went at it with axes, and presently it was 
clear. 

As the tide rose, we gave our grounded friends a lift 



Our March to Washington 249 

with the hawser. No go ! The " Boston " tugged in vain. 
We got near enough to see the whites of the Massachusetts 
eyes, and their unlucky faces and uniforms all grimy with 
their lodgings in the coal-dust. They could not have been 
blacker, if they had been breathing battle-smoke and dust 
all day. That experience was clear gain to them. 

By and by, greatly to the delight of the impatient Seventh, 
the '' Boston " was headed for shore. Never speak ill of the 
beast you bestraddle ! Therefore requiescat " Boston " ! may 
her ribs lie light on soft sand when she goes to pieces ! may 
her engines be cut up into bracelets for the arms of the 
patriotic fair ! good by to her, dear old, close, dirty, slow 
coach ! She served her country well in a moment of trial. 
Who knows but she saved it? It was a race to see who 
should first get to Washington, — and we and the Virginia 
mob, in alliance with the District mob, were perhaps nip 
and tuck for the goal. 

ANNAPOLIS 

So the Seventh Regiment landed and took Annapolis. 
We were the first troops ashore. 

The middies of the Naval Academy no doubt believe that 
they had their quarters secure. The Massachusetts boys 
are satisfied that they first took the town in charge. And 
so they did. 

But the Seventh took it a little more. Not, of course, 
from its loyal men, but for its loyal men, — for loyal Mary- 
land, and for the Union. 

Has anybody seen Annapolis? It is a picturesque old 
place, sleepy enough, and astonished to find itself wide- 
awaked by a war, and obliged to take responsibility and 
share for good and ill in the movement of its time. The 
buildings of the Naval Academy stand parallel with the 
river Severn, with a green plateau toward the water and 



250 American Essays 

a lovely green lawn toward the town. All the scene was 
fresh and fair with April, and I fancied, as the '' Boston " 
touched the wharf, that I discerned the sweet fragrance of 
apple-blossoms coming with the spring-time airs. 

I hope that the companies of the Seventh, should the day 
arrive, will charge upon horrid batteries or serried ranks 
with as much alacrity as they marched ashore on the green- 
sward of the Naval Academy. We disembarked, and were 
halted in line between the buildings and the river. 

Presently, while we stood at ease, people began to arrive, 
— some with smallish fruit to sell, some with smaller news 
to give. Nobody knew whether Washington was taken. 
Nobody k*Qew whether Jeff Davis was now spitting in the 
Presidential spittoon, and scribbling his distiches with the 
nib of the Presidential goose-quill. We were absolutely 
in doubt whether a seemingly inoffensive knot of rustics, 
on a mound without the inclosures, might not, at tap of 
drum, unmask a battery of giant columbiads, and belch 
blazes at us, raking our line. 

Nothing so entertaining happened. It was a parade, 
not a battle. At sunset our band played strains sweet 
enough to pacify all Secession, if Secession had music in its 
soul. Coffee, hot from the coppers of the Naval School, 
and biscuit were served out to us ; and while we supped, we 
talked with our visitors, such as were allowed to approach. 

First the boys of the School — fine little blue- jackets — had 
their story to tell. 

''Do you see that white farm-house, across the river?" 
says a brave pigmy of a chap in navy uniform. " That is 
head-quarters for Secession. They were going to take the 
School from us. Sir, and the frigate; but we've got ahead 
of 'em, now you and the Massachusetts boys have come 
down," — and he twinkled all over with delight. " We can't 
study any more. We are on guard all the time. We've got 



Our March to Washington 251 

howitzers, too, and we'd like you to see, to-morrow, on 
drill, how we can handle 'em. One of their boats came by 
our sentry last night," (a sentry probably five feet high), 
*' and he blazed away, Sir. So they thought they wouldn't 
try us that time." 

It was plain that these young souls had been well tried 
by the treachery about them. They, too, had felt the pang 
of the disloyalty of comrades. Nearly a hundred of the 
boys had been spoilt by the base example of their elders 
in the repudiating States, and had resigned. 

After the middies, came anxious citizens from the town. 
Scared, all of them. Now that we were come and assured 
them that persons and property were to be protected, they 
ventured to speak of the disgusting tyranny to which they, 
American citizens, had been subjected. We came into con- 
tact here with utter social anarchy. No man, unless he was 
ready to risk assault, loss of property, exile, dared to act 
or talk like a freeman. " This great wrong must be righted," 
think the Seventh Regiment, as one man. So we tried to 
reassure the Annapolitans that we meant to do our duty 
as the nation's armed police, and mob-law was to be put 
down, so far as we could do it. 

Here, too, voices of war met us. The country was stirred 
up. If the rural population did not give us a bastard imi- 
tation of Lexington and Concord, as we tried to gain 
Washington, all Pluguglydom would treat us a la Plugugly 
somewhere near the junction of the Annapolis and Balti- 
more and Washington Railroad. The Seventh must be 
ready to shoot. 

At dusk we were marched up to the Academy and quar- 
tered about in the buildings, — some in the fort, some in the 
recitation-halls. We lay down on our blankets and knap- 
sacks. Up to this time our sleep and diet had been severely 
scanty. 



252 American Essays 

We stayed all next day at Annapolis. The '' Boston " 
brought the Massachusetts Eighth ashore that night. Poor 
fellows ! what a figure they cut, when we found them 
bivouacked on the Academy grounds next morning ! To 
begin: They had come off in hot patriotic haste, half-uni- 
formed and half-outfitted. Finding that Baltimore had 
been taken by its own loafers and traitors, and that the 
Chesapeake ferry was impracticable, had obliged them to 
change line of march. They were out of grub. They were 
parched dry for want of water on the ferry-boat. Nobody 
could decipher Caucasian, much less Bunker-Hill Yankee, 
in their grimy visages. 

But, hungry, thirsty, grimy, these fellows were Grit. 

Massachusetts ought to be proud of such hardy, cheerful, 
faithful sons. 

We of the Seventh are proud, for our part, that it was 
our privilege to share our rations with them, and to begin 
a fraternization which grows closer every day and will be 
historical. 

But I must make a shorter story. We drilled and were 
reviewed that morning on the Academy parade. In the 
afternoon the Naval School paraded their last before they 
gave up their barracks to the coming soldiery. So ended 
the 23d of April. 

Midnight, 24th. We were rattled up by an alarm, — 
perhaps a sham one, to keep us awake and lively. In a 
moment, the whole regiment was in order of battle in the 
moonlight on the parade. It was a most brilliant spectacle, 
as company after company rushed forward, with rifles glit- 
tering, to take their places in the array. 

After this pretty spirt, we were rationed with pork, beef, 
and bread for three days, and ordered to be ready to march 
on the instant. 



Our March to Washington 253 

what the massachusetts eighth had been doing 

Meantime General Butler's command, the Massachusetts 
Eighth, had been busy knocking disorder in the head. 

Presently after their landing, and before they were re- 
freshed, they pushed companies out to occupy the railroad- 
track beyond the town. 

They found it torn up. No doubt the scamps who did 
the shabby job fancied that there would be no more travel 
that way until strawberry-time. They fancied the Yankees 
would sit down on the fences and begin to whittle white- 
oak toothpicks, darning the rebels, through their noses, 
meanwhile. 

I know these men of the Eighth can whittle, and I pre- 
sume they can say " Darn it," if occasion requires; but just 
now track-laying was the business on hand. 

'' Wanted, experienced track-layers ! " was the word along 
the files. 

All at once the line of the road became densely popu- 
lated with experienced track-layers, fresh from Massa- 
chusetts. 

Presto change ! the rails were relaid, spiked, and the 
roadway leveled and better ballasted than any road I ever 
saw south of Mason and Dixon's line. 

" We must leave a good job for these folks to model 
after," say the Massachusetts Eighth. 

A track without a train is as useless as a gun without 
a man. Train and engine must be had. " Uncle Sam's 
mails and troops cannot be stopped another minute," our 
energetic friends conclude. So, — the railroad company's 
people being either frightened or false, — in marches Massa- 
chusetts to the station. " We, the People of the United 
States, want rolling-stock for the use of the Union," they 
said, or words to that effect. 



254 American Essays 

The engine — a frowsy machine at the best — had been 
purposely disabled. 

Here appeared the deus ex machina, Charles Homans, 
Beverly Light Guard, Company E, Eighth Massachusetts 
Regiment. 

That is the man, name and titles in full, and he deserves 
well of his country. 

He took a quiet squint at the engine, — it was as helpless 
as a boned turkey, — and he found '* Charles Homans, his 
mark," written all over it. 

The old rattletrap was an old friend. Charles Homans 
had had a share in building it. The machine and the man 
said, " How d'y' do ? " at once. Homans called for a gang 
of engine-builders. Of course they swarmed out of the 
ranks. They passed their hands over the locomotive a few 
times, and presently it was ready to whistle and wheeze and 
rumble and gallop, as if no traitor had ever tried to steal 
the go and the music out of it. 

This had all been done during the afternoon of the 23d. 
During the night, the renovated engine was kept cruising 
up and down the track to see all clear. Guards of the 
Eighth were also posted to protect passage. 

Our commander had, I presume, been co-operating with 
General Butler in this business. The Naval Academy 
authorities had given us every despatch and assistance, and 
the middies, frank, personal hospitality. The day was 
halcyon, the grass was green and soft, the apple-trees were 
just in blossom: it was a day to be remembered. 

Many of us will remember it, and show the marks of it 
for months, as the day we had our heads cropped. By even- 
ing there was hardly one poll in the Seventh tenable by 
anybody's grip. Most sat in the shade and were shorn by 
a barber. A few were honored with a clip by the artist 
hand of the petit caporal of our Engineer Company. 



Our March to Washington 255 

While I rattle off these trifling details, let me not fail to 
call attention to the grave service done by our regiment, by 
its arrival, at the nick of time, at Annapolis. No clearer 
special Providence could have happened. The country- 
people of the traitor sort were aroused. Baltimore and its 
mob were but two hours away. The " Constitution " had 
been hauled out of reach of a rush by the Massachusetts 
men, — first on the ground, — but was half manned and not 
fully secure. And there lay the " Maryland," helpless on 
the shoal, with six or seven hundred souls on board, so 
near the shore that the late Captain Rynders's gun could 
have sunk her from some ambush. 

Yes! the Seventh Regiment at Annapolis was the Right 
Man in the Right Place! 

OUR MORNING MARCH 

Reveille. As nobody pronounces this word a la 
francaise, as everybody calls it '' Revelee," why not drop 
it, as an affectation, and translate it the *' Stir your Stumps," 
the '' Peel your Eyes," the '' Tumble Up," or literally the 
"Wake"? 

Our snorers had kept up this call so lustily since mid- 
night, that, when the drums sounded it, we were all ready. 

The Sixth and Second Companies, under Captain Nevers, 
are detached to lead the van. I see my brother Billy march 
off with the Sixth, into the dusk, half moonlight, half dawn, 
and hope that no beggar of a Secessionist will get a pat 
shot at him, by the roadside, without his getting a chance 
to let fly. in return. Such little possibilities intensify the 
earnest detestation we feel for the treasons we come to resist 
and to punish. There will be some bitter work done, 
if we ever get to blows in this war, — this needless, reckless, 
brutal assault upon the mildest of all governments. 



256 American Essays 

Before the main body of the regiment marches, we learn 
that the " BaUic " and other transports came in last night 
with troops from New York and New England, enough 
to hold Annapolis against a square league of Plug Uglies. 
We do not go on without having our rear protected and 
our communications open. It is strange to be compelled 
to think of these things in peaceful America. But we really 
knew little more of the country before us than Cortes knew 
of Mexico. I have since learned from a high official, that 
thirteen different messengers were dispatched from Wash- 
ington in the interval of anxiety while the Seventh was not 
forthcoming, and only one got through. 

At half-past seven we take up our line of march, pass 
out of the charming grounds of the Academy, and move 
through the quiet, rusty, picturesque old town. It has a 
romantic dullness, — Annapolis, — which deserves a parting 
compliment. 

Although we deem ourselves a fine-looking set, although 
our belts are blanched with pipe-clay and our rifles shine 
sharp in the sun, yet the townspeople stare at us in a dismal 
silence. They have already the air of men quelled by a 
despotism. None can trust his neighbor. If he dares to be 
loyal, he must take his life into his hands. Most would 
be loyal, if they dared. But the system of society which 
has ended in this present chaos had gradually eliminated 
the bravest and best men. They have gone in search of 
Freedom and Prosperity; and now the bullies cow the 
weaker brothers. *' There must be an end of this mean 
tyranny," think the Seventh, as they march through old 
Annapolis and see how sick the town is with doubt and 
alarm. 

Outside the town, we strike the railroad and move along, 
the howitzers in front, bouncing over the sleepers. When 
our line is fully disengaged from the town, we halt. 



Our March to Washington 257 

Here the scene is beautiful. The van rests upon a high 
embankment, with a pool surrounded by pine-trees on the 
right, green fields on the left. Cattle are feeding quietly 
about. The air sings with birds. The chestnut-leaves 
sparkle. Frogs whistle in the warm spring morning. The 
regiment groups itself along the bank and the cutting. 
Several Marylanders of the half-price age — under twelve — 
come gaping up to see us harmless invaders. Each of these 
young gentry is armed with a dead spring frog, perhaps 
by way of tribute. And here— hollo! here comes Horace 
Greeley in propria persona! He marches through our 
groups with the Greeley walk, the Greeley hat on the back 
of his head^ the Greeley white coat on his shoulders, his 
trousers much too short, and an absorbed, abstracted de- 
meanor. Can it be Horace, reporting for himself? No; 
this is a Maryland production, and a little disposed to be 
sulky. 

After a few minutes' halt, we hear the whistle of the 
engine. This machine is also an historic character in the 
war. 

Remember it ! " J. H. Nicholson " is its name. Charles 
Holmes drives, and on either side stands a sentry with fixed 
bayonet. New spectacles for America! But it is grand to 
know that the bayonets are to protect, not to assail. Liberty 
and Law. 

The train leads off. We follow, by the track. Presently 
the train returns. We pass it and trudge on in light march- 
ing order, carrying arms, blankets, haversacks, and can- 
teens. Our knapsacks are upon the train. 

Fortunate for our backs that they do not have to bear 
any more burden ! For the day grows sultry. It is one of 
those breezeless baking days which brew thunder-gusts. 
We march for some four miles, when, coming upon the 
guards of the Massachusetts Eighth, our howitzer is ordered 



258 American Essays 

to fall out and wait for the train. With a comrade of the 
Artillery, I am placed on guard over it. 

ON GUARD WITH HOWITZER NO. TWO 

Henry Bonnell is my fellow-sentry. He, like myself, is 
an old campaigner in such campaigns as our generation has 
known. So we talk California, Oregon, Indian life, the 
Plains, keeping our eyes peeled meanwhile, and ranging 
the country. Men that will tear up track are quite capable 
of picking off a sentry. A giant chestnut gives us little 
dots of shade from its pigmy leaves. The country about 
us is open and newly plowed. Some of the worm-fences 
are new, and ten rails high; but the farming is careless, 
and the soil thin. 

Two of the Massachusetts men come back to the gun 
while we are standing there. One is my friend Stephen 
Morris, of Marblehead, Sutton Light Infantry. I had 
shared my breakfast yesterday with Stephe. So we re- 
fraternize. 

His business is, — " I make shoes in winter and fishin' 
in summer." He gives me a few facts, — suspicious persons 
seen about the track, men on horseback in the distance. 
One of the Massachusetts guard last night challenged his 
captain. Captain replied, " Officer of the night." Where- 
upon, says Stephe, "the recruit let squizzle and jest missed 
his ear." He then related to me the incident of the railroad 
station. " The first thing they know'd," says he, " we bit 
right into the depot and took charge." " I don't mind," 
Stephe remarked, — '' I don't mind life, nor yit death ; but 
whenever I see a Massachusetts boy, I stick by him, and if 
them Secessionists attackt us to-night, or any other time, 
they'll get in debt." 

Whistle, again! and the train appears. We are ordered 



Our March to Washington 259 

to ship our howitzer on a platform car. The engine pushes 
us on. This train brings our Hght baggage and the rear 
guard. 

A hundred yards farther on is a deUcious fresh spring 
below the bank. While the train halts, Stephe Morris 
rushes down to fill my canteen. '' This a'n't like Marble- 
head," says Stephe, panting up ; " but a man that can shin up 
them rocks can git right over this sand." 

The train goes slowly on, as a rickety train should. At 
intervals we see the fresh spots of track just laid by our 
Yankee friends. Near the sixth mile, we began to overtake 
hot and uncomfortable squads of our fellows. The un- 
seasonable heat of this most breathless day was too much 
for many of the younger men, unaccustomed to rough work, 
and weakened by want of sleep and irregular food in our 
hurried movements thus far. 

Charles Homans's private carriage was, however, ready 
to pick up tired men, hot men, thirsty men, men with corns, 
or men with blisters. They tumbled into the train in con- 
siderable numbers. 

An enemy that dared could have made a moderate bag 
of stragglers at this time. But they would not have been 
allowed to straggle, if any enemy had been about. By this 
time we were convinced that no attack was to be expected 
in this part of the way. 

The main body of the regiment, under Major Shaler, a 
tall, soldierly fellow, with a mustache of the fighting color, 
tramped on their own pins to the watering-place, eight 
miles or so from Annapolis. There troops and train came 
to a halt, with the news that a bridge over a country road 
was broken a mile farther on. 

It had been distinctly insisted upon, in the -usual South- 
ern style, that we were not to be allowed to pass through 
Maryland, and that we were to be '' welcomed to hospitable 



26o American Essays 

graves." The broken bridge was a capital spot for a skir- 
mish. Why not look for it here? 

We looked; but got nothing. The rascals could skulk 
about by night, tear up rails, and hide them where they 
might be found by a man with half an eye, or half destroy 
a bridge ; but there was no shoot in them. They have not 
faith enough in their cause to risk their lives for it, even 
behind a tree or from one of these thickets, choice spots 
for ambush. 

So we had no battle there, but a battle of the elements. 
The volcanic heat of the morning was followed by a furious 
storm of wind and a smart shower. The regiment wrapped 
themselves in their blankets and took their wetting with 
more or less satisfaction. They were receiving samples of 
all the different little miseries of a campaign. 

And here let me say a word to my fellow-volunteers, 
actual and prospective, in all the armies of all the States : — 

A soldier needs, besides his soldierly drill, 
I. Good Feet. 
II. A good Stomach. 

III. And after these, come the good Head and the good 
Heart. 

But Good Feet are distinctly the first thing. Without 
them you cannot get to your duty. If a comrade, or a 
horse, or a locomotive, takes you on its back to the field, 
you are useless there. And when the field is lost, you can- 
not retire, run away, and save your bacon. 

Good shoes and plenty of walking make good feet. A man 
who pretends to belong to an infantry company ought al- 
ways to keep himself in training, so that any moment he can 
march twenty or thirty miles without feeling a pang or 
raising a blister. Was this the case with even a decimation 
of the army who rushed to defend Washington? Were you 
so trained, my comrades of the Seventh ? 



Our March to Washington 261 

A captain of a company, who will let his men march with 
such shoes as I have seen on the feet of some poor fellows 
in this war, ought to be garroted with shoe-strings, or at 
least compelled to play Pope and wash the feet of the whole 
army of the Apostles of Liberty. 

If you find a foot-soldier lying beat out by the roadside, 
desperate as a sea-sick man, five to one his heels are too 
high, or his soles too narrow or too thin, or his shoe is not 
made straight on the inside, so the great toe can spread into 
its place as he treads. 

I am an old walker over Alps across the water, and over 
Cordilleras, Sierras, Deserts and Prairies at home; I have 
done my near sixty miles a day without discomfort, — and 
speaking from large experience, and with painful recollec- 
tions of the suffering and death I have known for want of 
good feet on the march, I say to every volunteer : — 

Trust in God ; but keep your shoes easy ! 

THE BRIDGE 

When the frenzy of the brief tempest was over, it began 
to be a question, " What to do about the broken bridge? " 
The gap was narrow ; but even Charles Homans could not 
promise to leap the '' J. H. Nicholson " over it. Who was 
to be our Julius Caesar in bridge-building? Who but Ser- 
geant Scott, Armorer of the Regiment, with my fellow- 
sentry of the morning, Bonnell, as First Assistant? 

Scott called for a working party. There were plenty of 
handy fellows among our Engineers and in the Line. Tools 
were plenty in the Engineers' chest. We pushed the plat- 
form car upon which howitzer No. i was mounted down to 
the gap, and began operations. 

'' I wish," says the petit caporal of the Engineer Company, 
patting his howitzer gently on the back, *' that I could get 



262 American Essays 

this Putty Blower pointed at the enemy, while you fellows 
are bridge-building." 

The inefficient destructives of Maryland had only half 
spoilt the bridge. Some of the old timbers could be used, — 
and for new ones, there was the forest. 

Scott and his party made a good and a quick job of it. 
Our friends of the Massachusetts Eighth had now come up. 
They lent a ready hand, as usual. The sun set brilliantly. 
By twilight there was a practicable bridge. The engine was 
dispatched back to keep the road open. The two platform 
cars, freighted with our howitzers, were rigged with the 
gun-ropes for dragging along the rail. We passed through 
the files of the Massachusetts men, resting by the way, and 
eating by the fires of the evening the suppers we had in 
great part provided them; and so begins our night-march. 

THE NIGHT-MARCH 

O Gottschalk! what a poetic Marche de Nuit we then 
began to play, with our heels and toes, on the railroad 
track ! 

It was full-moonlight and the night inexpressibly sweet 
and serene. The air was cool and vivified by the gust and 
shower of the afternoon. Eresh spring was in every 
breath. Our fellows had forgotten that this morning they 
were hot and disgusted. Everyone hugged his rifle as if 
it were the arm of the Girl of his Heart, and stepped out 
gayly for the promenade. Tired or foot-sore men, or even 
lazy ones, could mount upon the two freight-cars we were 
using for artillery-wagons. There were stout arms enough 
to tow the whole. 

The scouts went ahead under Eirst Lieutenant Earnham 
of the Second Company. We were at school together, — I 
am afraid to say how many years ago. He is just the same 



Our March to Washington 263 

cool, dry, shrewd fellow he was as a boy, and a most effi- 
cient officer. 

It was an original kind of march. I suppose a battery of 
howitzers never before found itself mounted upon cars, 
ready to open fire at once and bang away into the offing with 
shrapnel or into the bushes with canister. Our line ex- 
tended a half-mile along the track. It was beautiful to stand 
on the bank above a cutting, and watch the files strike from 
the shadow of a wood into a broad flame of moonlight, every 
rifle sparkling up alert as it came forward. A beautiful 
sight to see the barrels writing themselves upon the dimness, 
each a silver flash. 

By and by, " Halt ! " came, repeated along from the front, 
company after company. '' Halt ! a rail gone." 

It was found without difficulty. The imbeciles who took 
it up probably supposed we would not wish to wet our 
feet by searching for it in the dewy grass of the next field. 
With incredible doltishness they had also left the chairs and 
spikes beside the track. Bonnell took hold, and in a few 
minutes had the rail in place and firm enough to pass the 
engine. Remember, we were not only hurrying on to suc- 
cor Washington, but opening the only convenient and prac- 
ticable route between it and the loyal States. 

A little farther on, we came to a village, — a rare sight 
in this scantily peopled region. Here Sergeant Keeler, of 
our company, the tallest man in the regiment, and one of 
the handiest, suggested that we should tear up the rails at 
a turn-out by the station, and so be prepared for chances. 
So " Out crowbars ! " was the word. We tore up and 
bagged half a dozen rails, with chairs and spikes complete. 
Here too, some of the engineers found a keg of spikes. 
This was also bagged and loaded on our cars. We fought 
the chaps with their own weapons, since they would not meet 
us with ours. 



264 American Essays 

These things made delay, and by and by there was a long 
halt, while the Colonel communicated, by orders sounded 
along the line, with the engine. Homans's drag was hard 
after us, bringing our knapsacks and traps. 

After I had admired for some time the beauty of our 
moonlit line, and listened to the orders as they grew or died 
along the distance, I began to want excitement. Bonnell 
suggested that he and I should scout up the road and see 
if any rails were wanting. We traveled along into the quiet 
night. 

A mile ahead of the line we suddenly caught the gleam 
of a rifle-barrel. ''Who goes there?" one of our own 
scouts cl'fallenged smartly. 

We had arrived at the nick of time. Three rails were 
up. Two of them were easily found. The third was dis- 
covered by beating the bush thoroughly. Bonnell and I ran 
back for tools, and returned at full trot with crowbar and 
sledge on our shoulders. There were plenty of wiUing 
hands to help, — too many, indeed, — and with the aid of a 
huge Massachusetts man we soon had the rail in place. 

From this time on we were constantly interrupted. Not 
a half-mile passed without a rail up. Bonnell was always 
at the front laying track, and I am proud to say that he 
accepted me as aide-de-camp. Other fellows, unknown to 
me in the dark, gave hearty help. The Seventh showed 
that it could do something else than drill. 

At one spot, on a high embankment over standing water, 
the rail was gone, sunk probably. Here we tried our rails 
brought from the turn-out. They were too short. We 
supplemented with a length of plank from our stores. We 
rolled our cars carefully over. They passed safe. But 
Homans shook his head. He could not venture a locomo- 
tive on that frail stuff. So we lost the society of the '' J. H, 
Nicholson." Next day the Massachusetts commander called 



Our March to Washington 265 

for someone to dive in the pool for the lost rail. Plump 
into the water went a little wiry chap and grappled the rail. 
" When I come up," says the brave fellow afterwards to 
me, " our officer out with a twenty-dollar gold-piece and 
wanted me to take it. ' That a'n't what I come for,' says 
I. ' Take it,' says he, * and share with the others.' ' That 
a'n't what they come for,' says I. But I took a big cold," 
the diver continued, " and I'm condemned hoarse yit," — 
which was the fact. 

Farther on we found a whole length of track torn up, 
on both sides, sleepers and all, and the same thing repeated 
with alternations of breaks of single rails. Our howitzer- 
ropes came into play to hoist and haul. We were not going 
to be stopped. 

But it was becoming a Noche Triste to some of our com- 
rades. We had now marched some sixteen miles. The dis- 
tance was trifling. But the men had been on their legs pretty 
much all day and night. Hardly anyone had had any full 
or substantial sleep or meal since we started from New 
York. They napped off, standing, leaning on their guns, 
dropping down in their tracks on the wet ground, at every 
halt. They were sleepy, but plucky. As we passed through 
deep cuttings, places, as it were, built for defense, there 
was a general desire that the tedium of the night should 
be relieved by a shindy. 

During the whole night I saw our officers moving about 
the line, doing their duty vigorously, despite exhaustion, 
hunger and sleeplessness. 

About midnight our friends of the Eighth had joined us, 
and our whole little army struggled on together. I find 
that I have been rather understating the troubles of the 
march. It seems impossible that such difficulty could be 
encountered within twenty miles of the capital of our na- 
tion. But we were making a rush to put ourselves in that 



266 American Essays 

capital, and we could not proceed in the slow, systematic 
way of an advancing army. We must take the risk and 
stand the suffering, whatever it was. So the Seventh Regi- 
ment went through its bloodless Noche Trvste. 

MORNING 

At last we issued from the damp woods, two miles below 
the railroad junction. Here was an extensive farm. Our 
vanguard had halted and borrowed a few rails to make 
fires. These were, of course, carefully paid for at their 
proprietor's own price. The fires were bright in the gray 
dawn. About them the whole regiment was now halted. 
The men tumbled down to catch forty winks. Some, who 
were hungrier for food than sleep, went off foraging among 
the farm-houses. They returned with appetizing legends 
of hot breakfast in hospitable abodes, or scanty fare given 
grudgingly in hostile ones. All meals, however, were 
paid for. 

Here, as at other halts below, the country-people came 
up to talk to us. The traitors could easily be distinguished 
by their insolence disguised as obsequiousness. The loyal 
men were still timid, but more hopeful at last. All were very 
lavish with the monosyllable. Sir. It was an odd coinci- 
dence, that the vanguard, halting off at a farm in the 
morning, found it deserted for the moment by its tenants, 
and protected only by an engraved portrait of our (former) 
Colonel Duryea, serenely smiling over the mantel-piece. 

From this point, the railroad was pretty much all gone. 
But we were warmed and refreshed by a nap and a bite, 
and besides had daylight and open country. 

We put our guns on their own wheels, all dropped into 
ranks as if on parade, and marched the last two miles to 
the station. We still had no certain information. Until we 



Our March to Washington 267 

actually saw the train awaiting us, and the Washington 
companies, who had come down to escort us, drawn up, 
we did not know whether our Uncle Sam was still a resi- 
dent of the capital. 

We packed into the train, and rolled away to Wash- 
ington. 

WASHINGTON 

We marched up to the White House, showed ourselves 
to the President, made our bow to him as our host, and 
then marched up to the Capitol, our grand lodgings. 

There we are now, quartered in the Representatives' 
Chamber. 

And here I must hastily end this first sketch of the Great 
Defense. May it continue to be as firm and faithful as it 
is this day! 

I have scribbled my story with a thousand men stirring 
about me. If any of my sentences miss their aim, accuse 
my comrades and the bewilderment of this martial crowd. 
For here are four or five thousand others on the same 
business as ourselves, and drums are beating, guns are 
clanking, companies are tramping, all the while. Our 
friends of the Eighth Massachusetts are quartered under 
the dome, and cheer us whenever we pass. 

Desks marked John Covode, John Cochran, and Anson 
Burlingame have allowed me to use them as I wrote. 



CALVIN 

a study of character 

Charles Dudley Warner 

Calvin is dead. His life, long to him, but short for the 
rest of us, was not marked by startling adventures, but his 
character was so uncommon and his qualities were so 
worthy of imitation, that I have been asked by those who 
personally knew him to set down my recollections of his 
career. 

His origin and ancestry were shrouded in mystery; even 
his age was a matter of pure conjecture. Although he was 
of the Maltese race, I have reason to suppose that he was 
American by birth as he certainly was in sympathy. Calvin 
was given to me eight years ago by Mrs. Stowe, but she 
knew nothing of his age or origin. He walked into her 
house one day out of the great unknown and became at 
once at home, as if he had been always a friend of the 
family. He appeared to have artistic and literary tastes, and 
it was as if he had inquired at the door if that was the 
residence of the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and, upon 
being assured that it was, had decided to dwell there. This 
is, of course, fanciful, for his antecedents were wholly 
unknown, but in his time he could hardly have been in 
any household where he would not have heard Uncle Tom's 
Cabin talked about. When he came to Mrs. Stowe, he was 
as large as he ever was, and apparently as old as he ever 
became. Yet there was in him no appearance of age ; he 
was in the happy maturity of all his powers, and you 

268 



Calvin 269 

would rather have said that in that maturity he had found 
the secret of perpetual youth. And it v^as as difficult to 
believe that he would ever be aged as it was to imagine 
that he had ever been in immature youth. There was in 
him a mysterious perpetuity. 

After some years, when Mrs. Stowe made her winter 
home in Florida, Calvin came to live with us. From the 
first moment, he fell into the ways of the house and assumed 
a recognized position in the family, — I say recognized, be- 
cause after he became known he was always inquired for 
by visitors, and in the letters to the other members of the 
family he always received a message. Although the least 
obtrusive of beings, his individuality always made itself 
felt. 

His personal appearance had much to do with this, for 
he was of royal mould, and had an air of high breeding. 
He was large, but he had nothing of the fat grossness of 
the celebrated Angora family ; though powerful, he was ex- 
quisitely proportioned, and as graceful in every movement 
as a young leopard. When he stood up to open a door — 
he opened all the doors with old-fashioned latches — he was 
portentously tall, and when stretched on the rug before 
the fire he seemed too long for this world — as indeed he 
was. His coat was the finest and softest I have ever seen, 
a shade of quiet Maltese; and from his throat downward, 
underneath, to the white tips of his feet, he wore the whitest 
and most delicate ermine ; and no person was ever more 
fastidiously neat. In his finely formed head you saw some- 
thing of his aristocratic character; the ears were small 
and cleanly cut, there was a tinge of pink in the nostrils, his 
face was handsome, and the expression of his countenance 
exceedingly intelligent — I should call it even a sweet expres- 
sion if the term were not inconsistent with his look of alert- 
ness and sagacity. 



270 American Essays 

It is difficult to convey a just idea of his gayety in con- 
nection with his dignity and gravity, which his name ex- 
pressed. As we know nothing of his family, of course it 
will be understood that Calvin was his Christian name. 
He had times of relaxation into utter playfulness, delight- 
ing in a ball of yarn, catching sportively at stray ribbons 
when his mistress was at her toilet, and pursuing his own 
tail, with hilarity, for lack of anything better. He could 
amuse himself by the hour, and he did not care for chil- 
dren ; perhaps something in his past was present to his 
memory. He had absolutely no bad habits, and his dis- 
position was perfect. I never saw him exactly angry, 
though I have seen his tail grow to an enormous size when 
a strange cat appeared upon his lawn. He disliked cats, 
evidently regarding them as feline and treacherous, and 
he had no association with them. Occasionally there would 
be heard a night concert in the shrubbery. Calvin would 
ask to have the door opened, and then you would hear a 
rush and a " pestzt," and the concert w^ould explode, and 
Calvin would quietly come in and resume his seat on the 
hearth. There was no trace of anger in his manner, but 
he wouldn't have any of that about the house. He had 
the rare virtue of magnanimity. Although he had fixed 
notions about his own rights, and extraordinary persist- 
ency in getting them, he never showed temper at a repulse ; 
he simply and firmly persisted till he had what he wanted. 
His diet was one point; his idea was that of the scholars 
about dictionaries, — to " get the best." He knew as well as 
anyone what was in the house, and would refuse beef if 
turkey was to be had ; and if there were oysters, he would 
wait over the turkey to see if the oysters would not be 
forthcoming. And yet he was not a gross gourmand; he 
would eat bread if he saw me eating it, and thought he was 
not being imposed on. His habits of feeding, also, were 



Calvin 271 

refined; he never used a knife, and he would put up his 
hand and draw the fork down to his mouth as gracefully 
as a grown person. Unless necessity compelled, he would 
not eat in the kitchen, but insisted upon his meals in the 
dining-room, and would wait patiently, unless a stranger 
were present; and then he was sure to importune the 
visitor, hoping that the latter was ignorant of the rule of 
the house, and would give him something. They used 
to say that he preferred as his table-cloth on the floor 
a certain well-known church journal; but this was said by 
an Episcopalian. So far as I know, he had no religious 
prejudices, except that he did not like the association with 
Romanists. He tolerated the servants, because they be- 
longed to the house, and would sometimes linger by the 
kitchen stove; but the moment visitors came in he arose, 
opened the door, and marched into the drawing-room. Yet 
he enjoyed the company of his equals, and never withdrew, 
no matter how many callers — whom he recognized as of 
his society — might come into the drawing-room. Calvin 
was fond of company, but he wanted to choose it; and I 
have no doubt that his was an aristocratic fastidiousness 
rather than one of faith. It is so with most people. 

The intelligence of Calvin was something phenomenal, 
in his rank of life. He established a method of communi- 
cating his wants, and even some of his sentiments ; and he 
could help himself in many things. There was a furnace 
register in a retired room, where he used to go when he 
wished to be alone, that he always opened when he desired 
more heat ; but never shut it, any more than he shut the 
door after himself. He could do almost everything but 
speak ; and you would declare sometimes that you could see 
a pathetic longing to do that in his intelligent face. I have 
no desire to overdraw his qualities, but if there was one 
thing in him more noticeable than another, it was his fond- 



2^2 American Essays 

ness for nature. He could content himself for hours at 
a low window, looking into the ravine and at the great trees, 
noting the smallest stir there; he delighted, above all 
things, to accompany me walking about the garden, hearing 
the birds, getting the smell of the fresh earth, and rejoicing 
in the sunshine. He followed me and gamboled like a dog, 
rolling over on the turf and exhibiting his delight in a 
hundred ways. If I worked, he sat and watched me, or 
looked off over the bank, and kept his ear open to the 
twitter in the cherry-trees. When it stormed, he was sure 
to sit at the window, keenly watching the rain or the snow, 
glancing up and down at its falling; and a winter tempest 
always delighted him. I think he was genuinely fond of 
birds, but, so far as I know, he usually confined himself 
to one a day; he never killed, as some sportsmen do, for 
the sake of killing, but only as civilized people do, — from 
necessity. He was intimate with the flying-squirrels who 
dwell in the chestnut-trees, — too intimate, for almost every 
day in the summer he would bring in one, until he nearly 
discouraged them. He was, indeed, a superb hunter, and 
would have been a devastating one, if his bump of destruc- 
tiveness had not been offset by a bump of moderation. 
There was very little of the brutality of the lower animals 
about him; I don't think he enjoyed rats for themselves, 
but he knew his business, and for the first few months of 
his residence with us he waged an awful campaign against 
the horde, and after that his simple presence was sufficient 
to deter them from coming on the premises. Mice amused 
him, but he usually considered them too small game to be 
taken seriously; I have seen him play for an hour with a 
mouse, and then let him go with a royal condescension. In 
this whole matter of " getting a living," Calvin was a great 
contrast to the rapacity of the age in which he lived. 

I hesitate a Httle to speak of his capacity for friendship 



Calvin" 273 

and the affectionateness of his nature, for I know from his 
own reserve that he would not care to have it much talked 
about. We understood each other perfectly, but we never 
made any fuss about it ; when I spoke his name and snapped 
my fingers, he came to me ; when I returned home at night, 
he was pretty sure to be waiting for me near the gate, 
and would rise and saunter along the walk, as if his being 
there were purely accidental, — so shy was he commonly of 
showing feeling; and when I opened the door he never 
rushed in, like a cat, but loitered, and lounged, as if he 
had had no intention of going in, but would condescend 
to. And yet, the fact was, he knew dinner was ready, and 
he was bound to be there. He kept the run of dinner- 
time. It happened sometimes, during our absence in the 
summer, that dinner would be early, and Calvin, walking 
about the grounds, missed it and came in late. But he 
never made a mistake the second day. There was one 
thing he never did, — he never rushed through an open door- 
way. He never forgot his dignity. If he had asked to have 
the door opened, and was eager to go out, he always went 
deliberately; I can see him now, standing on the sill, look- 
ing about at the sky as if he was thinking whether it were 
worth while to take an umbrella, until he was near having 
his tail shut in. 

His friendship was rather constant than demonstrative. 
When we returned from an absence of nearly two years, 
Calvin welcomed us with evident pleasure, but showed his 
satisfaction rather by tranquil happiness than by fuming 
about. He had the faculty of making us glad to get home- 
It was his constancy that was so attractive. He liked com- 
panionship, but he wouldn't be petted, or fussed over, or 
sit in anyone's lap a moment ; he always extricated himself 
from such familiarity with dignity and with no show of 
temper. If there was any petting to be done, however, he 



274 American Essays 

chose to do it. Often he would sit looking at me, and 
then, moved by a delicate affection, come and pull at my 
coat and sleeve until he could touch my face with his nose, 
and then go away contented. He had a habit of coming 
to my study in the morning, sitting quietly by my side or 
on the table for hours, watching the pen run over the paper, 
occasionally swinging his tail round for a blotter, and then 
going to sleep among the papers by the inkstand. Or, more 
rarely, he would watch the writing from a perch on my 
shoulder. Writing always interested him, and, until he 
understood it, he wanted to hold the pen. 

He always held himself in a kind of reserve with his 
friend, as if he had said, " Let us respect our personality, 
and not make a ' mess ' of friendship." He saw, with 
Emerson, the risk of degrading it to trivial conveniency. 
" Why insist on rash personal relations with your friend ? " 
*' Leave this touching and clawing." Yet I would not give 
an unfair notion of his aloofness, his fine sense of the 
sacredness of the me and the not-me. And, at the risk 
of not being believed, I will relate an incident, which was 
often repeated. Calvin had the practice of passing a portion 
of the night in the contemplation of its beauties, and would 
come into our chamber over the roof of the conservatory 
through the open window, summer and winter, and go to 
sleep on the foot of my bed. He would do this always 
exactly in this way; he never was content to stay in the 
chamber if we compelled him to go upstairs and through 
the door. He had the obstinacy of General Grant. But this 
is by the way. In the morning, he performed his toilet and 
went down to breakfast with the rest of the family. Now, 
when the mistress was absent from home, and at no other 
time, Calvin would come in the morning, when the bell 
rang, to the head of the bed, put up his feet and look into 
my face, follow me about when I rose, " assist " at the 



Calvii^ 275 

dressing, and in many purring ways show his fondness, as 
if he had plainly said, " I know that she has gone away, 
but I am here." Such was Calvin in rare moments. 

He had his limitations. Whatever passion he had for 
nature, he had no conception of art. There was sent to 
him once a fine and very expressive cat's head in bronze, by 
Fremiet. I placed it on the floor. He regarded it intently, 
approached it cautiously and crouchingly, touched it with 
his nose, perceived the fraud, turned away abruptly, and 
never would notice it afterward. On the whole, his life 
was not only a successful one, but a happy one. He never 
had but one fear, so far as I know : he had a mortal and a 
reasonable terror of plumbers. He would never stay in 
the house when they were here. No coaxing could quiet 
him. Of course he didn't share our fear about their charges, 
but he must have had some dreadful experience with them 
in that portion of his life which is unknown to us. A 
plumber was to him the devil, and I have no doubt that, 
in his scheme, plumbers were foreordained to do him mis- 
chief. 

In speaking of his worth, it has never occurred to me 
to estimate Calvin by the worldly standard. I know that 
it is customary now, when anyone dies, to ask how much 
he was worth, and that no obituary in the newspapers 
is considered complete without such an estimate. The 
plumbers in our house were one day overheard to say that, 
*' They say that she says that he says that he wouldn't take 
a hundred dollars for him." It is unnecessary to say that 
I never made such a remark, and that, so far as Calvin 
was concerned, there was no purchase in money. 

As I look back upon it, Calvin's life seems to me a 
fortunate one, for it was natural and unforced. He ate 
when he was hungry, slept when he was sleepy, and en- 
joyed existence to the very tips of his toes and the end of 



276 American Essays 

his expressive and slow-moving tail. He delighted to roam 
about the garden, and stroll among the trees, and to lie 
on the green grass and luxuriate in all the sweet influences 
of summer. You could never accuse him of idleness, and 
yet he knew the secret of repose. The poet who wrote so 
prettily of him that his little life was rounded with a sleep, 
understated his felicity; it was rounded with a good many. 
His conscience never seemed to interfere with his slumbers. 
In fact, he had good habits and a contented mind. I can see 
him now walk in at the study door, sit down by my chair, 
bring his tail artistically about his feet, and look up at me 
with unspeakable happiness in his handsome face. I often 
thought that he felt the dumb limitation which denied him 
the power of language. But since he was denied speech, he 
scorned the inarticulate mouthings of the lower animals. 
The vulgar mewing and yowling of the cat species was 
beneath him; he sometimes uttered a sort of articulate 
and well-bred ejaculation, when he wished to call atten- 
tion to something that he considered remarkable, or to some 
want of his, but he never went whining about. He would 
sit for hours at a closed window, when he desired to enter, 
without a murmur, and when it was opened he never ad- 
mitted that he had been impatient by " bolting " in. Though 
speech he had not, and the unpleasant kind of utterance 
given to his race he would not use, he had a mighty power 
of purr to express his measureless content with congenial 
society. There was in him a musical organ with stops 
of varied power and expression, upon which I have no doubt 
he could have performed Scarlatti's celebrated cat's-fugue. 

Whether Calvin died of old age, or was carried off by 
one of the diseases incident to youth, it is impossible to say ; 
for his departure was as quiet as his advent was mysterious. 
I only know that he appeared to us in this world in his 
perfect stature and beauty, and that after a time, like 



Lohengrin, he withdrew. In his illness there was nothing 
more to be regretted than in all his blameless life. I sup- 
pose there never was an illness that had more of dignity 
and sweetness and resignation in it. It came pn gradually, 
in a kind of listlessness and want of appetite. An alarming 
symptom was his preference for the warmth of a furnace- 
register to the lively sparkle of the open wood-fire. What- 
ever pain he suffered, he bore it in silence, and seemed only 
anxious not to obtrude his malady. We tempted him with 
the delicacies of the season, but it soon became impossible 
for him to eat, and for two weeks he ate or drank scarcely 
anything. Sometimes he made an effort to take something, 
but it was evident that he made the eiTort to please us. 
The neighbors— and I am convinced that the advice of 
neighbors is never good for anything — suggested catnip. 
He wouldn't even smell it. We had the attendance of an 
amateur practitioner of medicine, whose real office was 
the cure of souls, but nothing touched his case. He took 
what was offered, but it was with the air of one to whom 
the time for pellets was passed. He sat or lay day after 
day almost motionless, never once making a display of those 
vulgar convulsions or contortions of pain which are so dis- 
agreeable to society. His favorite place was on the brightest 
spot of a Smyrna rug by the conservatory, where the sun- 
light fell and he could hear the fountain play. If we went 
to him and exhibited our interest in his condition, he always 
purred in recognition of our sympathy. And when I spoke 
his name, he looked up with an expression that said, " I un- 
derstand it, old fellow, but it's no use." He was to all 
who came to visit him a model of calmness and patience in 
affliction. 

I was absent from home at the last, but heard by daily 
postal-card of his failing condition; and never again saw 
him alive. One sunny morning, he rose from his rug, went 



278 American Essays 

into the conservatory (he was very thin then), walked 
around it deUberately, looking at all the plants he knew, 
and then went to the bay-window in the dining-room, and 
stood a long time looking out upon the little field, now brown 
and sere, and toward the garden, where perhaps the happi- 
est hours of his life had been spent. It was a last look. 
He turned and walked away, laid himself down upon the 
bright spot in the rug, and quietly died. 

It is not too much to say that a little shock went through 
the neighborhood when it was known that Calvin was dead, 
so marked was his individuality ; and his friends, one after 
another, came in to see him. There was no sentimental 
nonsense about his obsequies ; it was felt that any parade 
would have been distasteful to him. John, who acted as 
undertaker, prepared a candle-box for him, and I believe 
assumed a professional decorum; but there may have been 
the usual levity underneath, for I heard that he remarked 
in the kitchen that it was ■ the " dryest wake he ever at- 
tended." Everybody, however, felt a fondness for Calvin, 
and regarded him with a certain respect. Between him and 
Bertha there existed a great friendship, and she appre- 
hended his nature ; she used to say that sometimes she was 
afraid of him, he looked at her so intelligently; she was 
never certain that he was what he appeared to be. 

When I returned, they had laid Calvin on a table in an 
upper chamber by an open window. It was February. He 
reposed in a candle-box, lined about the edge with ever- 
green, and at his head stood a little wine-glass with flowers. 
He lay with his head tucked down in his arms, — a favorite 
position of his before the fire, — as if asleep in the comfort 
of his soft and exquisite fur. It was the involuntary ex- 
clamation of those who saw him, '' How natural he looks ! " 
As for myself, I said nothing. John buried him under the 
twin hawthorn-trees, — one white and the other pink, — in a 



Calvin 279 

spot where Calvin v^as fond of lying and listening to the 
hum of summer insects and the tvv^itter of birds. 

Perhaps I have failed to make appear the individuality 
of character that v^as so evident to those who knew him. 
At any rate, I have set down nothing concerning him but 
the literal truth. He was always a mystery. I did not 
know whence he came ; I do not know whither he has gone. 
I would not weave one spray of falsehood in the wreath 
I lay upon his grave. 



[From My Summer in a Garden, by Charles Dudley Warner. Copy- 
right, 1870, by Fields, Osgood & Co. Copyright, 1898, by Charles 
Dudley Warner. Copyright, 1912, by Susan Lee Warner.] 



FIVE AMERICAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO 
CIVILIZATION 

Charles William Eliot 

Looking back over forty centuries of history, we ob- 
serve that many nations have made characteristic contribu- 
tions to the progress of civilization, the beneficent effects of 
which have been permanent, although the races that made 
them may have lost their national form and organization, 
or their relative standing among the nations of the earth. 
Thus, the Hebrew race, during many centuries, made su- 
preme contributions to religious thought; and the Greek, 
during the brief climax of the race, to speculative philoso- 
ophy, architecture, sculpture, and the drama. The Roman 
people developed military colonization, aqueducts, roads 
and bridges, and a great body of public law, large parts 
of which still survive ; and the Italians of the middle ages 
and the Renaissance developed ecclesiastical organization 
and the fine arts, as tributary to the splendor of the church 
and to municipal luxury. England, for several centuries, 
has contributed to the institutional development of repre- 
sentative government and public justice; the Dutch, in the 
sixteenth century, made a superb struggle for free thought 
and free government; France, in the eighteenth century, 
taught the doctrine of individual freedom and the theory 
of human rights ; and Germany, at two periods within the 
nineteenth century, fifty years apart, proved the vital force 
of the sentiment of nationality. I ask you to consider with 

280 



Five American Contributions to Civilization 281 

me what characteristic and durable contributions the Ameri- 
can people have been making to the progress of civiliza- 
tion. 

The first and principal contribution to which I shall 
ask your attention is the advance made in the United States, 
not in theory only, but in practice, toward the abandonment 
of war as the means of settling disputes between nations, 
the substitution of discussion and arbitration, and the avoid- 
ance of armaments. If the intermittent Indian fighting and 
the brief contest with the Barbary corsairs be disregarded, 
the United States have had only four years and a quarter 
of international war in the one hundred and seven years 
since the adoption of the Constitution. Within the same 
period the United States have been a party to forty-seven 
arbitrations — being more than half of all that have taken 
place in the modern world. The questions settled by these 
arbitrations have been just such as have commonly caused 
wars, namely, questions of boundary, fisheries, damage 
caused by war or civil disturbances, and injuries to com- 
merce. Some of them were of great magnitude, the four 
made under the treaty of Washington (May 8, 1871) being 
the most important that have ever taken place. Confident in 
their strength, and relying on their ability to adjust inter- 
national differences, the United States have habitually main- 
tained, by voluntary enlistment for short terms, a standing 
army and a fleet which, in proportion to the population, 
are insignificant. 

The beneficent effects of this American contribution to 
civihzation are of two sorts : in the first place, the direct 
evils of war and of preparations for war have been dimin- 
ished ; and secondly, the influence of the war spirit on the 
perennial conflict between the rights of the single personal 
unit and the powers of the multitude that constitute or- 
ganized society — or, in other words, between individual 



282 American Essays 

freedom and collective authority — has been reduced to the 
lowest terms. War has been, and still is, the school of col- 
lectivism, the warrant of tyranny. Century after century, 
tribes, clans, and nations have sacrificed the liberty of the 
individual to the fundamental necessity of being strong for 
combined defense or attack in war. Individual freedom is 
crushed in war, for the nature of war is inevitably despotic. 
It says to the private person: ''Obey without a question, 
even unto death; die in this ditch, without knowing why; 
walk into that deadly thicket; mount this embankment, be- 
hind which are men who will try to kill you, lest you should 
kill them; make part of an immense machine for blind 
destruction, cruelty, rapine, and killing." At this moment 
every young man in Continental Europe learns the lesson of 
absolute military obedience, and feels himself subject to this 
crushing power of militant society, against which no rights 
of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness 
avail anything. This pernicious influence, inherent in the 
social organization of all Continental Europe during many 
centuries, the American people have for generations es- 
caped, and they show other nations how to escape it. I 
ask your attention to the favorable conditions under which 
this contribution of the United States to civilization has 
been made. 

There has been a deal of fighting on the American conti- 
nent during the past three centuries ; but it has not been of 
the sort which most imperils liberty. The first European 
colonists who occupied portions of the coast of North Amer- 
ica encountered in the Indians men of the Stone Age, who 
ultimately had to be resisted and quelled by force. The 
Indian races were at a stage of development thousands 
of years behind that of the Europeans. They could not 
be assimilated; for the most part they could not be taught 
or even reasoned with ; with a few exceptions they had to 



Five American Contributions to Civilization 283 

be driven away by prolonged fighting, or subdued by force 
so that they would live peaceably with the whites. This 
warfare, however, always had in it for the whites a large 
element of self-defense — the homes and families of the set- 
tlers were to be defended against a stealthy and pitiless foe. 
Constant exposure to the attacks of savages was only one 
of the formidable dangers and difficulties which for a hun- 
dred years the early settlers had to meet, and which devel- 
oped in them courage, hardiness, and persistence. The 
French and English wars on the North American continent, 
always more or less mixed with Indian warfare, were char- 
acterized by race hatred and religious animosity — two of the 
commonest causes of war in all ages ; but they did not tend 
to fasten upon the English colonists any objectionable public 
authority, or to contract the limits of individual liberty. 
They furnished a school of martial qualities at small cost 
to liberty. In the War of Independence there was a 
distinct hope and purpose to enlarge individual liberty. It 
made possible a confederation of the colonies, and, ulti- 
mately, the adoption of the Constitution of the United 
States. It gave to the thirteen colonies a lesson in col- 
lectivism, but it was a needed lesson on the necessity of 
combining their forces to resist an oppressive external 
authority. The war of 1812 is properly called the Second 
War of Independence, for it was truly a fight for liberty 
and for the rights of neutrals, in resistance to the impress- 
ment of seamen and other oppressions growing out of 
European conflicts. The civil war of 1861-65 was waged, 
on the side of the North, primarily, to prevent the dismem- 
berment of the country, and, secondarily and incidentally, 
to destroy the institution of slavery. On the Northern side 
it therefore called forth a generous element of popular ardor 
in defense of free institutions ; and though it temporarily 
caused centralization of great powers in the government, it 



284 American Essays 

did as much to promote individual freedom as it did to 
strengthen pubhc authority. 

In all this series of fightings the main motives were self- 
defense, resistance to oppression, the enlargement of liberty, 
and the conservation of national acquisitions. The war 
with Mexico, it is true, was of a wholly different type. 
That was a war of conquest, and of conquest chiefly in the 
interest of African slavery. It was also an unjust attack 
made by a powerful people on a feeble one; but it lasted 
less than two years, and the number of men engaged in it 
was at no time large. Moreover, by the treaty which 
ended the war, the conquering nation agreed to pay the 
conquered eighteen million dollars in partial compensation 
for some of the territory wrested from it, instead of de- 
manding a huge war-indemnity, as the European way is. 
Its results contradicted the anticipations both of those who 
advocated and of those who opposed it. It was one of 
the wrongs which prepared the way for the great rebellion ; 
but its direct evils were of moderate extent, and it had no 
effect on the perennial conflict between individual liberty 
and public power. 

In the meantime, partly as the results of Indian fighting 
and the Mexican war, but chiefly through purchases and 
arbitrations, the American people had acquired a territory 
so extensive, so defended by oceans, gulfs, and great lakes, 
and so intersected by those great natural highways, naviga- 
ble rivers, that it would obviously be impossible for any 
enemy to overrun or subdue it. The civilized nations of 
Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa have always been 
liable to hostile incursions from without. Over and over 
again barbarous hordes have overthrown established civili- 
zations ; and at this moment there is not a nation of Europe 
which does not feel obliged to maintain monstrous arma- 
ments for defense against its neighbors. The American 



Five American Contributions to Civilization 285 

people have long been exempt from such terrors, and are 
now absolutely free from this necessity of keeping in readi- 
ness to meet heavy assaults. The absence of a great standing 
army and of a large fleet has been a main characteristic of 
the United States, in contrast v^ith the other civilized 
nations ; this has been a great inducement to immigration, 
and a prime cause of the country's rapid increase in v^ealth. 
The United States have no formidable neighbor, except 
Great Britain in Canada. In April, 181 7, by a convention 
made between Great Britain and the United States, with- 
out much public discussion or observation, these two pow- 
erful nations agreed that each should keep on the Great 
Lakes only a few police vessels of insignificant size and 
armament. This agreement was made but four years after 
Perry's naval victory on Lake Erie, and only three years 
after the burning of Washington by a British force. It 
was one of the first acts of Monroe's first administration, and 
it. would be difficult to find in all history a more judicious 
or effectual agreement between two powerful neighbors. 
For eighty years this beneficent convention has helped to 
keep the peace. The European way would have been to 
build competitive fleets, dock-yards, and fortresses, all of 
which would have helped to bring on war during the periods 
of mutual exasperation which have occurred since 181 7. 
Monroe's second administration was signalized, six years 
later, by the declaration that the United States would con- 
sider any attempt on the part of the Holy Alliance to extend 
their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous 
to the peace and safety of the United States. This an- 
nouncement was designed to prevent the introduction on 
the American continent of the horrible European system — 
with its balance of power, its alliances offensive and de- 
fensive in opposing groups, and its perpetual armaments on 
an enormous scale. That a declaration expressly intended 



286 American Essays 

to promote peace and prevent armaments should now be 
perverted into an argument for arming and for a bel- 
ligerent public policy is an extraordinary perversion of the 
true American doctrine. 

The ordinary causes of war between nation and nation 
have been lacking in America for the last century and a 
quarter. How many wars in the world's history have 
been due to contending dynasties; how many of the most 
cruel and protracted wars have been due to religious strife ; 
how many to race hatred ! No one of these causes of war 
has been efficacious in America since the French were over- 
come in Canada by the English in 1759. Looking forward 
into the future, we find it impossible to imagine circum- 
stances under which any of these common causes of war 
can take effect on the North American continent. There- 
fore, the ordinary motives for maintaining armaments in 
time of peace, and concentrating the powers of government 
in such a way as to interfere with individual liberty, have 
not been in play in the United States as among the nations 
of Europe, and are not likely to be. 

Such have been the favorable conditions under which 
America has made its best contribution to the progress 
of our race. 

There are some people of a perverted sentimentality who 
occasionally lament the absence in our country of the ordi- 
nary inducements to v/ar, on the ground that war develops 
certain noble qualities in some of the combatants, and gives 
opportunity for the practice of heroic virtues, such as cour- 
age, loyalty, and self-sacrifice. It is further said that pro- 
longed peace makes nations effeminate, luxurious, and mate- 
rialistic, and substitutes for the high ideals of the patriot 
soldier the low ideals of the farmer, manufacturer, trades- 
man, and pleasure-seeker. This view seems to me to err 
in two opposite ways. In the first place, it forgets that 



Five American Contributions to Civilization 287 

war, in spite of the fact that it develops some splendid vir- 
tues, is the most horrible occupation that human beings 
can possibly engage in. It is cruel, treacherous, and mur- 
derous. Defensive warfare, particularly on the part of a 
weak nation against powerful invaders or oppressors, excites 
a generous sympathy; but for every heroic defense there 
must be an attack by a preponderating force, and war, being 
the conflict of the two, must be judged by its moral effects 
not on one party, but on both parties. Moreover, the 
weaker party may have the worse cause. The immediate 
ill effects of war are bad enough, but its after effects are 
generally worse, because indefinitely prolonged and in- 
definitely wasting and damaging. At this moment, thirty- 
one years after the end of our civil war, there are two 
great evils afificting our country which took their rise in 
that war, namely, (i) the belief of a large proportion of 
our people in money without intrinsic value, or worth less 
than its face, and made current solely by act of Congress, 
and (2) the payment of immense annual sums in pensions. 
It is the paper-money delusion born of the civil war which 
generated and supports the silver-money delusion of to-day. 
As a consequence of the war, the nation has paid $2,000,- 
000,000 in pensions within thirty-three years. So far as 
pensions are paid to disabled persons, they are a just and 
inevitable, but unproductive expenditure; so far as they 
are paid to persons who are not disabled, — men or women, 
—they are in the main not only unproductive but demoraliz- 
ing; so far as they promote the marriage of young women 
to old men, as a pecuniary speculation, they create a grave 
social evil. It is impossible to compute or even imagine 
the losses and injuries already inflicted by the fiat-money 
delusion; and we know that some of the worst evils of 
the pension system will go on for a hundred years to come, 
unless the laws about widows' pensions are changed for 



288 American Essays 

the better. It is a significant fact that of the existing pen- 
sioners of the war of 1812 only twenty-one are surviving 
soldiers or sailors, while 3826 are widows/ 

War gratifies, or used to gratify, the combative instinct 
of mankind, but it gratifies also the love of plunder, de- 
struction, cruel discipine, and arbitrary power. It is doubt- 
ful whether fighting with modern appliances will continue 
to gratify the savage instinct of combat; for it is not likely 
that in the future two opposing lines of men can ever 
meet, or any line or column reach an enemy's intrench- 
ments. The machine-gun can only be compared to the 
scythe, which cuts off every blade of grass within its sweep. 
It has made cavalry charges impossible, just as the modern 
ironclad has made impossible the manoeuvers of one of 
Nelson's fleets. On land, the only mode of approach of 
one line to another must hereafter be by concealment, crawl- 
ing, or surprise. Naval actions will henceforth be conflicts 
between opposing machines, guided, to be sure, by men; 
but it will be the best machine that wins, and not necessarily 
the most enduring men. War will become a contest between 
treasuries or war-chests; for now that 10,000 men can fire 
away a million dollars' worth of ammunition in an hour, 
no poor nation can long resist a rich one, unless there be 
some extraordinary difference between the two in mental 
and moral strength. 

The view that war is desirable omits also the considera- 
tion that modern social and industrial life affords ample 
opportunities for the courageous and loyal discharge of 
duty, apart from the barbarities of warfare. There are 
many serviceable occupations in civil life which call for all 
the courage and fidelity of the best soldier, and for more 
than his independent responsibility, because not pursued in 
masses or under the immediate command of superiors. Such 
1 June 30, 1895. 



Five American Contributions to Civilization 289 

occupations are those of the locomotive engineer, the electric 
lineman, the railroad brakeman, the city fireman, and the 
policeman. The occupation of the locomotive engineer re- 
quires constantly a high degree of skill, alertness, fidelity, 
and resolution, and at any moment may call for heroic self- 
forgetfulness. The occupation of a lineman requires all 
the courage and endurance of a soldier, v^hose lurking foe 
is mysterious and invisible. In the two years, 1893 and 
1894, there were 34,000 trainmen killed and wounded on 
the railroads of the United States, and 25,000 other rail- 
road employes besides. I need not enlarge on the dangers 
of the fireman's occupation, or on the disciplined gallantry 
with which its risks are habitually incurred. The policeman 
in large cities needs every virtue of the best soldier, for 
in the discharge of many of his most important duties he 
is alone. Even the feminine occupation of the trained 
nurse illustrates every heroic quality which can possibly 
be exhibited in war; for she, simply in the way of duty, 
without the stimulus of excitement or companionship, runs 
risks from which many a soldier in hot blood would shrink. 
No one need be anxious about the lack of opportunities in 
civilized life for the display of heroic qualities. New indus- 
tries demand new forms of fidelity and self-sacrificing devo- 
tion. Every generation develops some new kind of hero. 
Did it ever occur to you that the " scab " is a creditable type 
of nineteenth century hero? In defense of his rights as an 
individual, he deliberately incurs the reprobation of many 
of his fellows, and runs the immediate risk of bodily injury, 
or even of death. He also risks his livelihood for the fu- 
ture, and thereby the well-being of his family. He steadily 
asserts in action his right to work on such conditions as 
he sees fit to make, and, in so doing, he exhibits remarkable 
courage, and renders a great service to his fellow-men. 
He is generally a quiet, unpretending, silent person, who 



290 American Essays 

values his personal freedom more than the society and 
approbation of his mates. Often he is impelled to work 
by family affection, but this fact does not diminish his hero- 
ism. There are file-closers behind the line of battle of 
the bravest regiment. Another modern personage who needs 
heroic endurance, and often exhibits it, is the public serv- 
ant who steadily does his duty against the outcry of a party 
press bent on perverting his every word and act. Through 
the telegram, cheap postage, and the daily newspaper, the 
forces of hasty public opinion can now be concentrated and 
expressed with a rapidity and intensity unknown to pre- 
ceding generations. In consequence, the independent 
thinker or actor, or the public servant, when his thoughts 
or acts run counter to prevailing popular or party, opinions, 
encounters sudden and intense obloquy, which, to many 
temperaments, is very formidable. That habit of submit- 
ting to the opinion of the majority which democracy fosters 
renders the storm of detraction and calumny all the more 
difficult to endure — makes it, indeed, so intolerable to many 
citizens, that they will conceal or modify their opinions 
rather than endure it. Yet the very breath of life for a 
democracy is free discussion, and the taking account, of 
all opinions honestly held and reasonably expressed. The 
unreality of the vilification of public men in the modern 
press is often revealed by the sudden change when an emi- 
nent public servant retires or dies. A man for whom no 
words of derision or condemnation were strong enough 
yesterday is recognized to-morrow as an honorable and 
serviceable person, and a credit to his country. Neverthe- 
less, this habit of partizan ridicule and denunciation in the 
daily reading-matter of millions of people calls for a new 
kind of courage and toughness in public men, and calls for 
it, not in brief moments of excitement only, but steadily, 
year in and year out. Clearly, there is no need of bringing 



Five American Contributions to Civilization 291 

on wars In order to breed heroes. Civilized life affords 
plenty of opportunities for heroes, and for a better kind 
than war or any other savagery has ever produced. More- 
over, none but lunatics would set a city on fire in order 
to give opportunities for heroism to firemen, or introduce 
the cholera or yellow fever to give physicians and nurses 
opportunity for practicing disinterested devotion, or con- 
demn thousands of people to extreme poverty in order that 
some well-to-do persons might practice a beautiful charity. 
It is equally crazy to advocate war on the ground that it 
is a school for heroes. 

Another misleading argument for war needs brief notice. 
It is said that war is a school of national development — that 
a nation, when conducting a great war, puts forth prodigious 
exertions to raise money, supply munitions, enlist troops, 
and keep them in the field, and often gets a clearer concep- 
tion and a better control of its own material and moral 
forces while making these unusual exertions. The nation 
which means to live in peace necessarily foregoes, it is said, 
these valuable opportunities of abnormal activity. Natu- 
rally, such a nation's abnormal activities devoted to de- 
struction would be diminished ; but its normal and abnormal 
activities devoted to construction and improvement ought to 
increase. 

One great reason for the rapid development of the 
United States since the adoption of the Constitution is the 
comparative exemption of the whole people from war, dread 
of war, and preparations for war. The energies of the 
people have been directed into other channels. The prog- 
ress of applied science during the present century, and the 
new ideals concerning the well-being of human multitudes, 
have opened great fields for the useful application of national 
energy. This immense territory of ours, stretching from 
ocean to ocean, and for the most part but imperfectly de- 



292 American Essays 

veloped and sparsely settled, affords a broad field for the 
beneficent application of the richest national forces during 
an indefinite period. There is no department of national 
activity in which we could not advantageously put forth 
much more force than we now expend ; and there are great 
fields which we have never cultivated at all. As examples, 
I may mention the post-office, national sanitation, public 
works, and education. Although great improvements have 
been made during the past fifty years in the collection and 
delivery of mail matter, much still remains to be done both 
in city and country, and particularly in the country. In 
the mail facilities secured to our people, we are far behind 
several European governments, whereas we ought to be far 
in advance of every European government except Switzer- 
land, since the rapid interchange of ideas, and the promotion 
of family, friendly, and commercial intercourse, are of more 
importance to a democracy than to any other form of 
political society. Our national government takes very little 
pains about the sanitation of the country, or its deliver- 
ance from injurious insects and parasites; yet these are 
matters of gravest interest, with which only the general 
government can deal, because action by separate States or 
cities is necessarily ineffectual. To fight pestilences needs 
quite as much energy, skill, and courage as to carry on 
war; indeed, the foes are more insidious and awful, and 
the means of resistance less obvious. On the average and 
the large scale, the professions which heal and prevent dis- 
ease, and mitigate suffering, call for much more ability, 
constancy, and devotion than the professions which inflict 
wounds and death and all sorts of human misery. Our 
government has never touched the important subject of 
national roads, by which I mean not railroads, but common 
highways; yet here is a great subject for beneficent action 
through government, in which we need only go for our 



Five American Contributions to Civilization 293 

lessons to little republican Switzerland. Inundations and 
droughts are great enemies of the human race, against which 
government ought to create defenses, because private enter- 
prise cannot cope with such wide-spreading evils. Popular 
education is another great field in which public activity 
should be indefinitely enlarged, not so much through the 
action of the Federal government, — though even there a 
much more effective supervision should be provided than 
now exists, — but through the action of States, cities, and 
towns. We have hardly begun to apprehend the fundamental 
necessity and infinite value of public education, or to ap- 
preciate the immense advantages to be derived from addi- 
tional expenditure for it. What prodigious possibilities 
of improvement are suggested by the single statement that 
the average annual expenditure for the schooling of a child 
in the United States is only about eighteen dollars ! Here 
is a cause which j-equires from hundreds of thousands of 
men and women keen intelligence, hearty devotion to duty, 
and a steady uplifting and advancement of all its standards 
and ideals. The system of public instruction should em- 
body for coming generations all the virtues of the mediaeval 
church. It should stand for the brotherhood and unity of 
all classes and conditions; it should exalt the joys of the 
intellectual life above all material delights; and it should 
produce the best constituted and most wisely directed intel- 
lectual and moral host that the world has seen. In view 
of such unutilized opportunities as these for the beneficent 
application of great public forces, does it not seem monstrous 
that war should be advocated on the ground that it gives 
occasion for rallying and using the national energies? 

The second eminent contribution which the United States 
have made to civilization is their thorough acceptance, in 
theory and practice, of the widest religious toleration. As 
a means of suppressing individual liberty, the collective 



294 American Essays 

authority of the Church, when elaborately organized in 
a hierarchy directed by one head and absolutely devoted 
in every rank to its service, comes next in proved efficiency 
to that concentration of pov^ers in government which en- 
ables it to carry on war effectively. The Western Christian 
Church, organized under the Bishop of Rome, acquired, 
during the middle ages, a centralized authority which quite 
overrode both the temporal ruler and the rising spirit of 
nationality. For a time Christian Church and Christian 
States acted together, just as in Egypt, during many earlier 
centuries, the great powers of civil and religious rule had 
been united. The Crusades marked the climax of the 
power of the Church. Thereafter, Church and State were 
often in conflict ; and during this prolonged conflict the 
seeds of liberty were planted, took root,- and made some 
sturdy growth. We can see now, as we look back on the 
history of Europe, how fortunate it was that the coloniza- 
tion of North America by Europeans was deferred until 
after the period of the Reformation, and especially until 
after the Elizabethan period in England, the Luther period 
in Germany, and the splendid struggle of the Dutch for 
liberty in Holland. The founders of New England and 
New York were men who had imbibed the principles of 
resistance both to arbitrary civil power and to universal 
ecclesiastical authority. Hence it came about that within 
the territory now covered by the United States no single 
ecclesiastical organization ever obtained a wide and op- 
pressive control, and that in different parts of this great 
region churches very unlike in doctrine and organization 
were almost simultaneously established. It has been an 
inevitable consequence of this condition of things that the 
Church, as a whole, in the United States has not been an 
effective opponent of any form of human rights. For gen- 
erations it has been divided into numerous sects and de- 



Five American Contributions to Civilization 295 

nominations, no one of which has been able to claim more 
than a tenth of the population as its adherents ; and the 
practices of these numerous denominations have been pro- 
foundly modified by political theories and practices, and 
by social customs natural to new communities formed under 
the prevailing conditions of free intercourse and rapid 
growth. The constitutional prohibition of religious tests 
as qualifications for office gave the United States the leader- 
ship among the nations in dissociating theological opinions 
and political rights. No one denomination or ecclesiastical 
organization in the United States has held great properties, 
or has had the means of conducting its ritual with costly 
pomp or its charitable works with imposing liberality. No 
splendid architectural exhibitions of Church power have 
interested or overawed the population. On the contrary, 
there has prevailed in general a great simplicity in public 
worship, until very recent years. Some splendors have 
been lately developed by religious bodies in the great cities ; 
but these splendors and luxuries have been almost simulta- 
neously exhibited by religious bodies of very different, 
not to say opposite, kinds. Thus, in New York city, the 
Jews, the Greek Church, the Catholics, and the Episco- 
palians have all erected, or undertaken to erect, magnifi- 
cent edifices. But these recent demonstrations of wealth 
and zeal are so distributed among differing religious organi- 
zations that they cannot be imagined to indicate a coming 
centralization of ecclesiastical influence adverse to indi- 
vidual liberty. 

In the United States, the great principle of religious tol- 
eration is better understood and more firmly established 
than in any other nation of the earth. It is not only 
embodied in legislation, but also completely recognized in 
the habits and customs of good society. Elsewhere it may 
be a long road from legal to social recognition of religious 



296 American Essays 

liberty, as the example of England shows. This recognition 
alone would mean, to any competent student of history, that 
the United States had made an unexampled contribution 
to the reconciliation of just governmental pov\rer with just 
freedom for the individual, inasmuch as the partial estab- 
lishment of religious toleration has been the main work of 
civilization during the past four centuries. In view of this, 
characteristic and infinitely beneficent contribution to human 
happiness and progress, how pitiable seem the temporary 
outbursts of bigotry and fanaticism which have occasion- 
ally marred the fair record of our country in regard to 
religious toleration ! If anyone imagines that this American 
contribution to civilization is no longer important, — that 
the victory for toleration has been already won, — let him 
recall the fact that the last years of the nineteenth century 
have witnessed two horrible religious persecutions, one by 
a Christian nation, the ether by a Moslem — one, of the Jews 
by Russia, and the other, of the Armenians by Turkey. 

The third characteristic contribution which the United 
States have made to civilization has been the safe develop- 
ment of a manhood suffrage nearly universal. The expe- 
rience of the United States has brought out several princi- 
ples with regard to the suffrage which have not been clearly 
apprehended by some eminent political philosophers. In 
the first place, American experience has demonstrated the 
advantages of a gradual approach to universal suffrage, 
over a sudden leap. Universal suffrage is not the first 
and only means of attaining democratic government ; rather, 
it is the ultimate goal of successful democracy. It is not 
a specific for the cure of all political ills ; on the contrary, 
it may itself easily be the source of great political evils. 
The people of the United States feel its dangers to-day. 
When constituencies are large, it aggravates the well-known 
difficulties of party government; so that many of the ills 



Five American Contributions to Civilization 297 

which threaten democratic communities at this moment, 
whether in Europe or America, proceed from the break- 
down of party government rather than from failures of 
universal suffrage. The methods of party government were 
elaborated where suffrage was limited and constituencies 
were small. Manhood suffrage has not worked perfectly 
well in the United States, or in any other nation where it 
has been adopted, and it is not likely very soon to work 
perfectly anywhere. It is like freedom of the will for the 
individual — the only atmosphere in which virtue can grow, 
but an atmosphere in which sin can also grow. Like free- 
dom of the will, it needs to be surrounded with checks and 
safeguards, particularly in the childhood of the nation; but, 
like freedom of the will, it is the supreme good, the goal 
of perfected democracy. Secondly, like freedom of the 
will, universal suffrage has an educational effect, which 
has been mentioned by many writers, but has seldom been 
clearly apprehended or adequately described. This edu- 
cational effect is produced in two ways : In the first place, 
the combination of individual freedom with social mobility, 
which a wide suffrage tends to produce, permits the capable 
to rise through all grades of society, even within a single 
generation ; and this freedom to rise is intensely stimulating 
to personal ambition. Thus every capable American, from 
youth to age, is bent on bettering himself and his con- 
dition. Nothing can be more striking than the contrast 
between the mental condition of an average American 
belonging to the laborious classes, but conscious that he 
can rise to the top of the social scale, and that of a Euro- 
pean mechanic, peasant, or tradesman, who knows that he 
cannot rise out of his class, and is content with his heredi- 
tary classification. The state of mind of the American 
prompts to constant struggle for self-improvement and the 
acquisition of all sorts of property and power. In the 



298 American Essays 

second place, it is a direct effect of a broad suffrage that 
the voters become periodically interested in the discussion 
of grave public problems, which carry their minds away 
from the routine of their daily labor and household experi- 
ence out into larger fields. The instrumentalities of this 
prolonged education have been multiplied and improved 
enormously within the last fifty years. In no field of hu- 
man endeavor have the fruits of the introduction of steam 
and electrical power been more striking than in the methods 
of reaching multitudes of people with instructive narratives, 
expositions, and arguments. The multiplication of news- 
papers, magazines, and books is only one of the immense 
developments in the means of reaching the people. The 
advocates of any public cause now have it in their power 
to provide hundreds of newspapers with the same copy, 
or the same plates, for simultaneous issue. The mails pro- 
vide the means of circulating millions of leaflets and 
pamphlets. The interest in the minds of the people which 
prompts to the reading of these multiplied communications 
comes from the frequently recurring elections. The more 
difficult the intellectual problem presented in any given 
election, the more educative the effect of the discussion. 
Many modern industrial and financial problems are ex- 
tremely difficult, even for highly-educated men. As sub- 
jects of earnest thought and discussion on the farm, and 
in the work-shop, factory, rolling-mill, and mine, they sup- 
ply a mental training for millions of adults, the like of 
which has never before been seen in the world. 

In these discussions, it is not only the receptive masses 
that are benefited ; the classes that supply the appeals to 
the masses are also benefited in a high degree. There is 
no better mental exercise for the most highly trained man 
than the effort to expound a difficult subject in so clear a 
way that the untrained man can understand it. In a repub- 



Five American Contributions to Civilization 299 

lie in which the final appeal is to manhood suffrage, the edu- 
cated minority of the people is constantly stimulated to 
exertion, by the instinct of self-preservation as well as by 
love of country. They see dangers in proposals made to 
universal suffrage, and they must exert themselves to ward 
off those dangers. The position of the educated and well- 
to-do classes is a thoroughly wholesome one in this respect : 
they cannot depend for the preservation of their advan- 
tages on land-owning, hereditary privilege, or any legisla- 
tion not equally applicable to the poorest and humblest 
citizen. They must maintain their superiority by being 
superior. They cannot live in a too safe corner. 

I touch here on a misconception which underlies much 
of the criticism of universal suffrage. It is commonly said 
that the rule of the majority must be the rule of the most 
ignorant and incapable, the multitude being necessarily un- 
instructed as to taxation, public finance, and foreign rela- 
tions, and untrained to active thought on such difficult 
subjects. Now, universal suffrage is merely a convention 
as to where the last appeal shall lie for the decision of 
public questions; and it is the rule of the majority only in 
this sense. The educated classes are undoubtedly a mi- 
nority; but it is not safe to assume that they monopolize 
the good sense of the community. On the contrary, it is 
very clear that native good judgment and good feeling are 
not proportional to education, and that among a multitude 
of men who have only an elementary education, a large 
proportion will possess both good judgment and good feel- 
ing. Indeed, persons who can neither read nor write may 
possess a large share of both, as is constantly seen in 
regions where the opportunities for education in childhood 
have been scanty or inaccessible. It is not to be supposed 
that the cultivated classes, under a regime of universal 
suffrage, are not going to try to make their cultivation 



300 American Essays 

felt in the discussion and disposal of public questions. Any 
result under universal suffrage is a complex effect of the 
discussion of the public question in hand by the educated 
classes in the presence of the comparatively uneducated, 
when a majority of both classes taken together is ulti- 
mately to settle the question. In practice, both classes divide 
on almost every issue. But, in any case, if the educated 
classes cannot hold their own with the uneducated, by 
means of their superior physical, mental, and moral quali- 
ties, they are obviously unfit to lead society. With educa- 
tion should come better powers of argument and persua- 
sion, a stricter sense of honor, and a greater general effect- 
iveness. With these advantages, the educated classes must 
undoubtedly appeal to the less educated, and try to convert 
them to their way of thinking ; but this is a process which 
is good for both sets of people. Indeed, it is the best pos- 
sible process for the training of freemen, educated or un- 
educated, rich or poor. 

It is often assumed that the educated classes become 
impotent in a democracy, because the representatives of 
those classes are not exclusively chosen to public office. 
This argument is a very fallacious one. It assumes that 
the public offices are the places of greatest influence ; 
whereas, in the United . States, at least, that is conspicu- 
ously not the case. In a democracy, it is important to dis- 
criminate influence from authority. Rulers and magistrates 
may or may not be persons of influence ; but many persons 
of influence never become rulers, magistrates, or represen- 
tatives in parliaments or legislatures. The complex indus- 
tries of a modern state, and its innumerable corporation 
services, ofifer great fields for administrative talent which 
were entirely unknown to preceding generations ; and these 
new activities attract many ambitious and capable men more 
strongly than the public service. These men are not on 



Five American Contributions to Civilization 301 

that account lost to their country or to society. The present 
generation has wholly escaped from the conditions of earlier 
centuries, when able men who were not great land-owners 
had but three outlets for their ambition — the army, the 
church, or the national civil service. The national service, 
whether in an empire, a limited monarchy, or a republic, 
is now only one of many fields which offer to able and 
patriotic men an honorable and successful career. Indeed, 
legislation and public administration necessarily have a very 
second-hand quality; and more and more legislators and 
administrators become dependent on the researches of 
scholars, men of science, and historians, and follow in the 
footsteps of inventors, economists, and political philoso- 
phers. Political leaders are very seldom leaders of thought ; 
they are generally trying to induce masses of men to act 
on principles thought out long before. Their skill is in 
the selection of practicable approximations to the ideal ; 
their arts are arts of exposition and persuasion ; their honor 
comes from fidelity under trying circumstances to famiUar 
principles of public duty. The real leaders of American 
thought in this century have been preachers, teachers, jur- 
ists, seers, and poets. While it is of the highest importance, 
under any form of government, that the public servants 
should be men of intelligence, education, and honor, it is 
no objection to any given form, that under it large numbers 
of educated and honorable citizens have no connection with 
the public service. 

Well-to-do Europeans, when reasoning about the work- 
ing of democracy, often assume that under any government 
the property-holders are synonymous with the intelligent 
and educated class. That is not the case in the American 
democracy. Anyone who has been connected with a large 
American university can testify that democratic institutions 
produce plenty of rich people who are not educated and 



302 American Essays 

plenty of educated people who are not rich, just as medise- 
val society produced illiterate nobles and cultivated monks. 

Persons who object to manhood suffrage as the last resort 
for the settlement of public questions are bound to show 
where, in all the world, a juster or more practicable regu- 
lation or convention has been arrived at. The objectors 
ought at least to indicate where the ultimate decision should, 
in their judgment, rest — as, for example, with the land- 
owners, or the property-holders, or the graduates of sec- 
ondary schools, or the professional classes. He would be 
a bold political philosopher who, in these days, should pro- 
pose that the ultimate tribunal should be constituted in 
any of these ways. All the experience of the civilized world 
fails to indicate a safe personage, a safe class, or a safe 
minority, with which to deposit this power of ultimate deci- 
sion. On the contrary, the experience of civilization indi- 
cates that no select person or class can be trusted with 
that power, no matter what the principle of selection. The' 
convention that the majority of males shall decide public 
questions has obviously great recommendations. It is ap- 
parently fairer than the rule of any minority, and it is sure 
to be supported by an adequate physical force. Moreover, 
its decisions are likely to enforce themselves. Even in mat- 
ters of doubtful prognostication, the fact that a majority 
of the males do the prophesying tends to the fulfillment of 
the prophecy. At any rate, the adoption or partial adoption 
of universal male suffrage by several civilized nations is 
coincident with unexampled ameliorations in the condition 
of the least fortunate and most numerous classes of the 
population. To this general amelioration many causes have 
doubtless contributed; but it is reasonable to suppose that 
the acquisition of the power which comes with votes has 
had something to do with it. 

Timid or conservative people often stand aghast at the 



Five American Contributions to Civilization 303 

possible directions of democratic desire, or at some of the 
predicted results of democratic rule ; but meantime the actual 
experience of the American democracy proves: i, that 
property has never been safer under any form of gov- 
ernment; 2, that no people have ever welcomed so ardently 
new machinery, and new inventions generally; 3, that reli- 
gious toleration was never carried so far, and never so uni- 
versally accepted; 4, that nowhere have the power and 
disposition to read been so general; 5, that nowhere has 
governmental power been more adequate, or more freely 
exercised, to levy and collect taxes, to raise armies and to 
disband them, to maintain public order, and to pay ofif great 
public debts — national, State, and town; 6, that nowhere 
have property and well-being been so widely diffused; and 
7, that no form of government ever inspired greater affec- 
tion and loyalty, or prompted to greater personal sacrifices 
in supreme moments. In view of these solid facts, specula- 
tions as to what universal suffrage would have done in 
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, or may do in the 
twentieth, seem futile indeed. The most civilized nations of 
the world have all either adopted this final appeal to man- 
hood suffrage, or they are approaching that adoption by 
rapid stages. The United States, having no customs or 
traditions of an opposite sort to overcome, have led the na- 
tions in this direction, and have had the honor of devising, 
as a result of practical experience, the best safeguards for 
universal suffrage, safeguards which, in the main, are 
intended to prevent hasty public action, or action based 
on sudden discontents or temporary spasms of public feel- 
ing. These checks are intended to give time for discussion 
and deliberation, or, in other words, to secure the enlight- 
enment of the voters before the vote. If, under new condi- 
tions, existing safeguards prove insufficient, the only wise 
course is to devise new safeguards. 



304 American Essays 

The United States have made to civiUzation a fourth 
contribution of a very hopeful sort, to which pubhc atten- 
tion needs to be directed, lest temporary evils connected 
therewith should prevent the continuation of this beneficent 
action. The United States have furnished a demonstration 
that people belonging to a great variety of races or nations 
are, under favorable circumstances, fit for political free- 
dom. It is the fashion to attribute to the enormous immi- 
gration of the last fifty years some of the failures of the 
American political system, and particularly the American 
failure in municipal government, and the introduction in 
a few States of the rule of the irresponsible party fore- 
men known as " bosses." Impatient of these evils, and 
hastily accepting this improbable explanation of them, some 
people wish to depart from the American policy of wel- 
coming immigrants. In two respects the absorption of 
large numbers of immigrants from many nations into the 
American commonwealth has been of great service to man- 
kind. In the first place, it has demonstrated that people 
who at home have been subject to every sort of aristo- 
cratic or despotic or military oppression become within less 
than a generation serviceable citizens of a republic; and, 
in the second place, the United States have thus educated 
to freedom many millions of men. Furthermore, the com- 
paratively high degree of happiness and prosperity enjoyed 
by the people of the United States has been brought home 
to multitudes in Europe by friends and relatives who have 
emigrated to this country, and has commended free insti- 
tutions to them in the best possible way. This is a legiti- 
mate propaganda vastly more efifective than any annexation 
or conquest of unwilling people, or of people unprepared 
for liberty. 

It is a great mistake to suppose that the process of 
assimilating foreigners began in this century. The eight- 



Five American Contributions to Civilization 305 

eenth century provided the colonies with a great mixture of 
peoples, although the English race predominated then, as 
now. When the Revolution broke out, there were already 
English, Irish, Scotch, Dutch, Germans, French, Portu- 
guese, and Swedes in the colonies. The French were, to be 
sure, in small proportion, and were almost exclusively Hu- 
guenot refugees, but they were a valuable element in the 
population. The Germans were well diffused, having estab- 
lished themselves in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, 
and Georgia. The Scotch were scattered through all the 
colonies. Pennsylvania, especially, was inhabited by an ex- 
traordinary mixture of nationalities and religions. Since 
steam-navigation on the Atlantic and railroad transportation 
on the North American continent became cheap and easy, 
the tide of immigration has greatly increased; but it is 
very doubtful if the amount of assimilation going on in 
the nineteenth century has been any larger, in proportion 
to the population and wealth of the country, than it was 
in the eighteenth. The main difference in the assimilation 
going on in the two centuries is this, that in the eighteenth 
century the newcomers were almost all Protestants, while in 
the nineteenth century a considerable proportion have been 
Catholics. One result, however, of the importation of large 
numbers of Catholics into the United States has been a 
profound modification of the Roman Catholic Church in 
regard to the manners and customs of both the clergy and 
the laity, the scope of the authority of the priest, and the 
attitude of the Catholic Church toward public education. 
This American modification of the Roman Church has re- 
acted strongly on the Church in Europe. 

Another great contribution to civilization made by the 
United States is the diffusion of material well-being among 
the population. No country in the world approaches the 
United States in this respect. It is seen in that diffused 



3o6 American Essays 

elementary education which implants for life a habit of 
reading, and in the habitual optimism which characterizes 
the common people. It is seen in the housing of the people 
and of their domestic animals, in the comparative costliness 
of their food, clothing, and household furniture, in their 
implements, vehicles, and means of transportation, and in 
the substitution, on a prodigious scale, of the work of 
machinery for the work of men's hands. This last item 
in American well-being is quite as striking in agriculture, 
mining, and fishing, as it is in manufactures. The social 
efifects of the manufacture of power, and of the discovery 
of means of putting that power just where it is wanted, 
have been more striking in the United States than anywhere 
else. Manufactured and distributed power needs intelli- 
gence to direct it: the bicycle is a blind horse, and must be 
steered at every instant ; somebody must show a steam-drill 
where to strike and how deep to go. So far as men and 
women can substitute for the direct expenditure of muscular 
strength the more intelligent effort of designing, tending, 
and guiding machines, they win promotion in the scale of 
being, and make their lives more interesting as well as more 
productive. It is in the invention of machinery for pro- 
ducing and distributing power, and at once economizing 
and elevating human labor, that American ingenuity has 
been most conspicuously manifested. The high price of 
labor in a sparsely-settled country has had something to do 
with this striking result; but the genius of the people and 
of their government has had much more to do with it. As 
proof of the general proposition, it suffices merely to men- 
tion the telegraph and telephone, the sewing-machine, the 
cotton-gin, the mower, reaper, and threshing-machine, 
the dish-washing machine, the river steamboat, the sleeping- 
car, the boot and shoe machinery, and the watch 
machinery. The ultimate effects of these and kindred in- 



Five American Contributions to Civilization 307 

ventions are quite as much intellectual as physical, and 
they are developing and increasing vv^ith a portentous ra- 
pidity which sometimes suggests a doubt whether the bodily 
forces of men and women are adequate to resist the new 
mental strains brought upon them. However this may prove 
to be in the future, the clear result in the present is an 
unexampled diffusion of well-being in the United States. 

These five contributions to civilization — peace-keeping, 
religious toleration, the development of manhood suffrage, 
the welcoming of newcomers, and the diffusion of well- 
being — I hold to have been eminently characteristic of our 
country, and so important that, in spite of the qualifica- 
tions and deductions which every candid citizen would 
admit with regard to every one of them, they will ever be 
held in the grateful remembrance of mankind. They are 
reasonable grounds for a steady, glowing patriotism. They 
have had much to do, both as causes and as effects, with 
the material prosperity of the United States ; but they are all 
five essentially moral contributions, being triumphs of rea- 
son, enterprise, courage, faith, and justice, over passion, 
selfishness, inertness, timidity, and distrust. Beneath each 
one of these developments there lies a strong ethical senti- 
ment, a strenuous moral and social purpose. It is for such 
work that multitudinous democracies are fit. 

In regard to all five of these contributions, the charac- 
teristic policy of our country has been from time to time 
threatened with reversal — is even now so threatened. It is 
for true patriots to insist on the maintenance of these his- 
toric purposes and policies of the people of the United States. 
Our country's future perils, whether already visible or still 
unimagined, are to be met with courage and constancy 
founded firmly on these popular achievements in the past. 



I TALK OF DREAMS 

W. D. HOWELLS 

But it is mostly my own dreams I talk of, and that will 
somewhat excuse me for talking of dreams at all. Everyone 
knows how delightful the dreams are that one dreams one's 
self, and how insipid the dreams of others are. I had an 
illustration of the fact, not many evenings ago, when a 
company of us got telling dreams. I had by far the best 
dreams of any; to be quite frank, mine were the only 
dreams worth listening to ; they were richly imaginative, 
delicately fantastic, exquisitely whimsical, and humorous in 
the last degree ; and I wondered that when the rest could 
have listened to them they were always eager to cut in with" 
some silly, senseless, tasteless thing that made me sorry 
and ashamed for them. I shall not be going too far if I 
say that it was on their part the grossest betrayal of vanity 
that I ever witnessed. 

But the egotism of some people concerning their dreams 
is almost incredible. They will come down to breakfast and 
bore everybody with a recital of the nonsense that has 
passed through their brains in sleep, as if they were not bad 
enough when they were awake; they will not spare the 
slightest detail ; and if, by the mercy of Heaven, they have 
forgotten something, they will be sure to recollect it, and go 
back and give it all over again with added circumstance. 
Such people do not reflect that there is something so purely 
and intensely personal in dreams that they can rarely interest 
anyone but the dreamer, and that to the dearest friend, the 

308 



I Talk of Dreams 309 

closest relation or connection, they can seldom be otherwise 
than tedious and impertinent. The habit husbands and 
wives have of making each other listen to their dreams is 
especially cruel. They have each other quite helpless, and 
for this reason they should all the more carefully guard 
themselves from abusing their advantage. Parents should 
not afflict their offspring with the rehearsal of their mental 
maunderings in sleep, and children should learn that one 
of the first duties a child owes its parents is to spare them 
the anguish of hearing what it has dreamed about over- 
night. A like forbearance in regard to the community at 
large should be taught as the first trait of good manners 
in the public schools, if we ever come to teach good man- 
ners there. 



Certain exceptional dreams, however, are so imperatively 
significant, so vitally important, that it would be wrong to 
withhold them from the knowledge of those who happened 
not to dream them, and I feel some such quality in my own 
dreams so strongly that I could scarcely forgive myself if 
I did not, however briefly, impart them. It was only the 
last week, for instance, that I found myself one night in 
the company of the Duke of Wellington^ the great Duke, 
the Iron one, in fact ; and after a few moments of agreeable 
conversation on topics of interest among gentlemen, his 
Grace said that now, if I pleased, he would like a couple 
of those towels. We had not been speaking of towels, that 
I remember, but it seemed the most natural thing in the 
world that he should mention them in the connection, what- 
ever it was, and I went at once to get them for him. At 
the place where they gave out towels, and where I found 
some very civil people, they told me that what I wanted 
was not towels, and they gave me instead two bath-gowns, 



3IO American Essays 

of rather scanty measure, butternut in color and Turkish in 
texture. The garments made somehow a very strong im- 
pression upon me, so that I could draw them now, if I could 
draw anything, as they looked when they were held up to 
me. At the same moment, for no reason that I can allege, 
I passed from a social to a menial relation to the Duke, and 
foresaw that when I went back to him with those bath- 
gowns he would not thank me as one gentleman would 
another, but would offer me a tip as if I were a servant. 
This gave me no trouble, for I at once dramatized a little 
scene between myself and the Duke, in which I should bring 
him the bath-gowns, and he should offer me the tip, and I 
should refuse it with a low bow, and say that I was an 
American. What I did not dramatize, or what seemed to 
enter into the dialogue quite without my agency, was the 
Duke's reply to my proud speech. It was foreshown me 
that he would say. He did not see why that should make 
any difference. I suppose it was in the hurt I felt at this 
wound to our national dignity that I now instantly invented 
the society of some ladies, whom I told of my business with 
those bath-gowns (I still had them in my hands), and urged 
them to go with me and call upon the Duke. They ex- 
pressed, somehow, that they would ratjier not, and then I 
urged that the Duke was very handsome. This seemed 
to end the whole affair, and I passed on to other visions, 
which I cannot recall. 

I have not often had a dream of such international import, 
in the offense offered through me to the American character 
and its well-known superiority to tips, but I have had others 
quite as humiliating to me personally. In fact, I am rather 
in the habit of having such dreams, and I think I may not 
unjustly attribute to them the disciplined modesty which the 
reader will hardly fail to detect in the present essay. It has 
more than once been my fate to find myself during sleep 



I Talk of Dreams 311 

in battle, where I behave with so little courage as to bring 
discredit upon our flag and shame upon myself. In these 
circumstances I am not anxious to make even a showing of 
courage ; my one thought is to get away as rapidly and 
safely as possible. It is said that this is really the wish of 
all novices under fire, and that the difference between a hero 
and a coward is that the hero hides it, with a duplicity which 
finally does him honor, and that the coward frankly runs 
away. I have never really been in battle, and if it is any- 
thing like a battle in dreams I would not willingly qualify 
myself to speak by the card on this point. Neither have I 
ever really been upon the stage, but in dreams I have often 
been there, and always in a great trouble of mind at not 
knowing my part. It seems a little odd that I should not 
sometimes be prepared, but I never am, and I feel that when 
the curtain rises I shall be disgraced beyond all reprieve. 
I dare say it is the sufifering from this that awakens me in 
time, or changes the current of my dreams so that I have 
never yet been actually hooted from the stage. 

II 

But I do not so much object to these ordeals as to some 
social experiences which I have in dreams. I cannot under- 
stand why one should dream of being .slighted or snubbed 
in society, but this is what I have done more than once, 
though never perhaps so signally as in the instance I am 
about to give. I found myself in a large room, where people 
were sitting at lunch or supper around small tables, as is 
the custom, I am told, at parties in the houses of our no- 
bility and gentry. I was feeling very well ; not too proud, 
I hope, but in harmony with the time and place. I was very 
well dressed, for me ; and as I stood talking to some ladies 
at one of the tables I was saying some rather brilliant things, 
for me ; I lounged easily on one foot, as I have observed men 



312 American Essays 

of fashion do, and as I talked, I flipped my gloves, which 
I held in one hand, across the other; I remember thinking 
that this was a peculiarly distinguished action. Upon the 
whole I comported myself like one in the habit of such 
affairs, and I turned to walk away to another table, very 
well satisfied with myself and with the effect of my splendor 
upon the ladies. But I had got only a few paces off when 
I perceived (I could not see with my back turned) one of 
the ladies lean forward, and heard her say to the rest in a 
tone of killing condescension and patronage : " I don't see 
why that person isn't as well as another." 

I say that I do not like this sort of dreams, and I never 
would have them if I could help. They make me ask 
myself if I am really such a snob when I am waking, and 
this in itself is very unpleasant. If I am, I cannot help 
hoping that it will not be found out; and in my dreams I 
am always less sorry for the misdeeds I commit than for 
their possible discovery. I have done some very bad things 
in dreams which I have no concern for whatever, except 
as they seem to threaten me with publicity or bring me 
within the penalty of the law; and I believe this is the atti- 
tude of most other criminals, remorse being a fiction of the 
poets, according to the students of the criminal class. It is 
not agreeable to bring this home to one's self, but the fact 
is not without its significance in another direction. It im- 
plies that both in the case of the dream-criminal and the 
deed-criminal there is perhaps the same taint of insanity; 
only in the deed-criminal it is active, and in the dream- 
criminal it is passive. In both, the inhibitory clause that 
forbids evil is off, but the dreamer is not bidden to do evil 
as the maniac is, or as the malefactor often seems to be. 
The dreamer is purely unmoral; good and bad are the 
same to his conscience ; he has no more to do with right 
and wrong than the animals; he is reduced to the state of 



I Talk of Dreams 313 

the merely natural man; and perhaps the primitive men 
were really like what we all are now in our dreams. Per- 
haps all life to them was merely dreaming, and they never 
had anything like our waking consciousness, which seems 
to be the offspring of conscience, or else the parent of it 
Until men passed the first stage of being, perhaps that 
which we call the soul, for want of a better name, or a 
worse, could hardly have existed, and perhaps in dreams the 
soul is mostly absent now. The soul, or the principle that 
we call the soul, is the supernal criticism of the deeds done 
in the body, which goes perpetually on in the waking mind. 
While this watches, and warns or commands, we go right; 
but when it is off duty we go neither right nor wrong, but 
are as the beasts that perish. 

A common theory is that the dreams which we remem- 
ber are those we have in the drowse which precedes sleep- 
ing and waking ; but I do not altogether accept this theory. 
In fact, there is very little proof of it. We often wake 
from a dream, literally, but there is no proof that we did 
not dream in the middle of the night the dream which is 
quite as vividly with us in the morning as the one we wake 
from. I should think that the dream which has some color 
of conscience in it was the drowse-dream, and that the 
dream which has none is the sleep-dream; and I believe 
that the most of our dreams wih be found by this test 
to be sleep-dreams. It is in these we may know what 
we would be without our souls, without their supernal criti- 
cism of the mind; for the mind keeps on working in them, 
with the lights of waking knowledge, both experience and 
observation, but ruthlessly, remorselessly. By them we 
may know what the state of the habitual criminal is, what 
the state of the lunatic, the animal, the devil is. In them 
the personal character ceases ; the dreamer is remanded 
to his type. 



314 ' American Essays 

/ 

III 

It is very strange, in the matter of dreadful dreams, how 
the body of the terror is, in the course of often dreaming, 
reduced to a mere convention. For a long time I was 
tormented with a nightmare of burglars, and at first I used 
to dramatize the whole affair in detail, from the time the 
burglars approached the house till they mounted the stairs 
and the light of their dark-lanterns shone under the door 
into my room. Now I have blue-penciled all that intro- 
ductory detail; I have a light shining in under my door 
at once ; I know that it is my old burglars ; and I have the 
effect of nightmare without further ceremony. There are 
other nightmares that still cost me a great deal of trouble 
in their construction, as, for instance, the nightmare of 
clinging to the face of a precipice or the eaves of a lofty 
building; I have to take as much pains with the arrange- 
ment of these as if I were now dreaming them for the first 
time and were hardly more than an apprentice in the 
business. 

Perhaps the most universal dream of all is that dis- 
graceful dream of appearing in public places and in society 
with very little or nothing on. This dream spares neither 
age nor sex, I believe, and I daresay the innocency of word- 
less infancy is abused by it and dotage pursued to the tomb. 
I have not the least doubt Adam and Eve had it in Eden; 
though, up to the moment the fig-leaf came in, it is difficult 
to imagine just what plight they found themselves in that 
seemed improper; probably there was some plight. The 
most amusing thing about this dream is the sort of defensive 
process that goes on in the mind in search of self-justifica- 
tion or explanation. Is there not some peculiar circum- 
stance or special condition in whose virtue it is wholly right 
and proper for one to come to a fashionable assembly clad 



I Talk of Dreams 315 

simply in a towel, or to go about the street in nothing but 
a pair of kid gloves, or of pajamas at the most? This, or 
something like it, the mind of the dreamer struggles to 
establish, with a good deal of anxious appeal to the by- 
standers and a final sense of the hopelessness of the cause. 

One may easily laugh off this sort of dream in the morn- 
ing, but there are other shameful dreams whose inculpation 
projects itself far into the day, and whose infamy often 
lingers about one till lunch-time. Everyone, nearly, has had 
them, but it is not the kind of dream that anyone is fond 
of telling: the gross vanity of the most besotted dream- 
teller keeps that sort back. During the forenoon, at least, 
the victim goes about with the dim question whether he is 
not really that kind of man harassing him, and a sort of 
remote fear that he may be. I fancy that as to his nature 
and as to his mind he is so, and that but for the supernal 
criticism, but for his soul, he might be that kind of man 
in very act and deed. 

The dreams we sometimes have about other people are 
not without a curious suggestion; and the superstitious 
(of those superstitious who like to invent their own super- 
stitions) might very well imagine that the persons dreamed 
of had a witting complicity in their facts, as well as the 
dreamer. This is a conjecture that must, of course, not be 
forced to any conclusion. One must not go to one of these 
persons and ask, however much one would like to ask : " Sir, 
have you no recollection of such and such a thing, at such 
and such a time and place, which happened to us in my 
dream?" Any such person would be fully justified in not 
answering the question. It would be, of all interviewing, 
the most intolerable species. Yet a singular interest, a curi- 
osity not altogether indefensible, will attach to these persons 
in the dreamer's mind, and he will not be without the sense, 
ever after, that he and they have a secret in common. This 



3i6 American Essays 

is dreadful, but the only thing that I can think to do about 
it is to urge people to keep out of other people's dreams by 
every means in their power. 

IV 

There are things in dreams very awful, which would not 
be at all so in waking — quite witless and aimless things, 
which at the time were of such baleful effect that it remains 
forever. I remember dreaming when I was quite a small 
boy, not more than ten years old, a dream which is vivider 
in my mind now than anything that happened at the time. 
I suppose it came remotely from my reading of certain 
" Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque," which had 
just then fallen into my hands; and it involved simply an 
action of the fire-company in the little town where I lived. 
They were working the brakes of the old fire-engine, which 
would seldom respond to their efforts, and as their hands 
rose and fell they set up the heart-shaking and soul-desolat- 
ing cry of " Arms Poe ! arms Poe ! arms Poe ! " This and 
nothing more was the body of my horror; and if the reader 
is not moved by it the fault is his and not mine; for I can 
assure him that nothing in my experience had been more 
dreadful to me. 

I can hardly except the dismaying apparition of a clown 
whom I once saw, somewhat later in life, rise through the 
air in a sitting posture and float lightly over the house-roof, 
snapping his fingers and vaguely smiling, while the antennae 
on his forehead, which clowns have in common with some 
other insects, nodded elasticity. I do not know why this 
portent should have been so terrifying, or indeed that it was 
a portent at all, for nothing ever came of it ; what I know 
is that it was to the last degree threatening and awful. I 
never got anything but joy out of the circuses where this 
dream must have originated, but the pantomime of " Don 



I Talk of Dreams 317 

Giovanni," which I saw at the theater, was as grewsome to 
me waking as it was to me dreaming. The statue of the 
Commendatore, in getting down from his horse to pursue 
the wicked hero (I think that is what he gets down for), 
set an example by which a long line of statues afterward 
profited in my dreams. For many years, and I do not know 
but quite up to the time when I adopted burglars as the 
theme of my nightmares, I was almost always chased by a 
marble statue with an uplifted arm, and almost always I 
ran along the verge of a pond to escape it. I believe that 
I got this pond out of my remote childhood, and that it 
may have been a fish-pond embowered by weeping-willows 
which I used to admire in the door-yard of a neighbor. 
I have somehow a greater respect for the material of this 
earlier nightmare than I have for that of the later ones, 
and no doubt the reader will agree with me that it is much 
more romantic to be pursued by a statue than to be threat- 
ened by burglars. It is but a few hours ago, however, that 
I saved myself from these inveterate enemies by waking up 
just in time for breakfast. They did not come with that 
light of the dark-lanterns shining unde'r the door, or I should 
have known them at once, and not had so much bother; but 
they intimated their presence in the catch of the lock, which 
would not close securely, and there was some question at first 
whether they were not ghosts. I thought of tying the door- 
knob on the inside of my room to my bedpost (a bedpost that 
has not been in existence for fifty years), but after suffering 
awhile I decided to speak to them from an upper window. 
By this time they had turned into a trio of harmless, neces- 
sary tramps, and at my appeal to them, absolutely nonsensi- 
cal as I now believe it to have been, to regard the peculiar 
circumstances, whatever they were or were not, they did 
really get up from the back porch where they were seated 
and go quietly away. 



3i8 American Essays 

Burglars are not always so easily to be entreated. On 
one occasion, when I found a party of them digging at 
the corner of my house on Concord Avenue in Cambridge, 
and opened the window over them to expostulate, the leader 
looked up at me in well-affected surprise. He lifted his 
hand, with a twenty-dollar note in it^ toward me, and said : 
" Oh ! Can you change me a twenty-dollar bill ? " I ex- 
pressed a polite regret that I had not so much money about 
me, and then he said to the rest, '' Go ahead, boys," and they 
went on undermining my house. I do not know what came 
of it all. 

Of ghosts I have seldom dreamed, so far as I can remem- 
ber; in fact, I have never dreamed of the kind of ghosts 
that we are all more or less afraid of, though I have dreamed 
rather often of the spirits of departed friends. But I once 
dreamed of dying, and the reader, who has never died yet, 
may be interested to know what it is like. According to 
this experience of mine, which I do not claim is typical, it 
is like a fire kindling in an air-tight stove with paper and 
shavings,; the gathering smoke and gases suddenly burst 
into flame and puff the door out, and all is over. 

I have not yet been led to execution for the many crimes 
I have committed in my dreams, but I was once in the 
hands of a barber who added to the shaving and sham- 
pooing business the art of removing his customers' heads in 
treatment for headache. As I took my seat in his chair I 
had some lingering doubts as to the effect of a treatment so 
drastic, and I ventured to mention the case of a friend 
of mine, a gentleman somewhat eminent in the law, who 
after several weeks was still going about without his head. 
The barber did not attempt to refute my position. He 
merely said : '' Oh, well, he had such a very thick sort of 
a head, anyway." 

This was a sarcasm, but I think it was urged as a reason. 



I Talk of Dreams 319 

though it may not have been. We rarely bring away from 
sleep the things that seem so brilliant to us in our dreams. 
Verse is especially apt to fade away, or turn into doggerel 
in the memory, and the witty sayings which we contrive to 
remember will hardly bear the test of daylight. The most 
perfect thing of the kind out of my own dreams was some- 
thing that I seemed to wake with the very sound of in my 
ears. It was after a certain dinner, which had been rather 
uncommonly gay, with a good deal of very good talk, which 
seemed to go on all night, and when I woke in the morning 
someone was saying : " Oh, I shouldn't at all mind his rob- 
bing Peter to pay Paul, if I felt sure that Paul would get 
the money." This I think really humorous, and an extremely 
neat bit of characterization ; I feel free to praise it, be- 
cause it was not I who said it. 



Apparently the greater part of dreams have no more mirth 
than sense in them. This is perhaps because the man is in 
dreams reduced to the brute condition, and is the lawless 
inferior of the waking man intellectually, as the lawless in 
waking are always the inferiors of the lawful. Some loose 
thinkers suppose that if we give the rein to imagination it 
will do great things, but it will really do little things, foolish 
and worthless things, as we witness in dreams, where it is 
quite unbridled. It must keep close to truth, and it must 
be under the law if it would work strongly and sanely. 
The man in his dreams is really lower than the lunatic in 
his deliriums. These have a logic of their own; but the 
dreamer has not even a crazy logic. 

" Like a dog, he hunts in dreams," 
and probably his dreams and the dog's are not only alike, 
but are of the same quality. In his wicked dreams the man 



320 American Essays 

is not only animal, he is devil, so wholly is he let into his 
evils, as the Swedenborgians say. The wrong is indifferent 
to him until the fear of detection and punishment steals in 
upon him. Even then he is not sorry for his misdeed, as I 
have said before; he is only anxious to escape its conse- 
quences. 

It seems probable that when this fear makes itself felt 
he is near to waking; and probably when we dream, as we 
often do, that the thing is only a dream, and hope for 
rescue from it by waking, we are always just about to wake. 
This double effect is very strange, but still more strange 
is the effect which we are privy to in the minds of others 
when they not merely say things to us which are wholly 
unexpected, but think things that we know they are think- 
ing, and that they do not express in words. A great many 
years ago, when I was young, I dreamed that my father, 
who was in another town, came into the room where I was 
really lying asleep and stood by my bed. He wished to 
greet me, after our separation, but he reasoned that if he 
did so I should wake, and he turned and left the room with- 
out touching me. This process in his mind, which I knew 
as clearly and accurately as if it had apparently gone on 
in my own, was apparently confined to his mind as abso- 
lutely as anything could be that was not spoken or in any 
wise uttered. 

Of course, it was of my agency, like any other part of 
the dream, and it was something like the operation of the 
novelist's intention through the mind of his characters. But 
in this there is the author's consciousness that he is doing 
it all himself, while in my dream this reasoning in the mind 
of another was something that I felt myself mere witness 
of. In fact, there is no analogy, so far as I can make out, 
between the process of literary invention and the process 
of dreaming. In the invention, the critical faculty is vividly 



I Talk of Dreams 321 

and constantly alert ; in dreaming, it seems altogether absent. 
It seems absent, too, in what we call day-dreaming, or that 
sort of dramatizing action which perhaps goes on perpetually 
in the mind, or some minds. But this day-dreaming is not 
otherwise any more like night-dreaming than invention is; 
for the man is never more actively and consciously a man, 
and never has a greater will to be fine and high and grand 
than in his day-dreams, while in his night-dreams he is 
quite willing to be a miscreant of any worst sort. 

It is very remarkable, in view of this fact, that we have 
now and then, though ever so much more rarely, dreams 
that are as angelic as those others are demoniac. Is it pos- 
sible that then the dreamer is let into his goods (the word 
is Swedenborg's again) instead of his evils? It may be 
supposed that in sleep the dreamer lies passive, while his 
proper soul is away, and other spirits, celestial and infernal, 
have free access to his mind, and abuse it to their own ends 
in the one case, and use it in his behalf in the other. 

That would be an explanation, but nothing seems quite 
to hold in regard to dreams. If it is true, why should the 
dreamer's state so much oftener be imbued with evil than 
with good? It might be answered that the evil forces are 
much more positive and aggressive than the good; or that 
the love of the dreamer, which is his life, being mainly evil, 
invites the wicked spirits oftener. But that is a point 
which I would rather leave each dreamer to settle for him- 
self. The greater number of everyone's dreams, like the 
romantic novel, I fancy, concern incident rather than char- 
acter, and I am not sure, after all, that the dream which 
convicts the dreamer of an essential baseness is commoner 
than the dream that tells in his favor morally. 

I daresay every reader of this book has had dreams so 
amusing that he has wakened himself from them by laugh- 
ing, and then not found them so very funny, or perhaps 



322 American Essays 

not been able to recall them at all. I have had at least one 
of this sort, remarkable for other reasons, which remains 
perfect in my mind, though it is now some ten years old. 
One of the children had been exposed to a very remote 
chance of scarlet-fever at the house of a friend, and had 
been duly scolded for the risk, which was then quite for- 
gotten. I dreamed that this friend, however, was giving 
a ladies' lunch, at which I was unaccountably and invisibly 
present, and the talk began to run upon the scarlet-fever 
cases in her family. She said that after the last she had 
fumigated the whole house for seventy-two hours (the 
period seemed very significant and important in my dream), 
and had burned everything she could lay her hands on. 

" And what did the nurse burn ? " asked one of the other 
ladies. 

The hostess began to laugh. '' The nurse didn't burn a 
thing!" 

Then all the rest burst out laughing at the joke, and the 
laughter woke me, to see the boy sitting up in his bed 
and hear him saying : " Oh, I am so sick ! " 

It was the nausea which announces scarlet-fever, and for 
six weeks after that we were in quarantine. Very likely 
the fear of the contagion had been in my nether mind all 
the time, but, so far as consciousness could testify of it, I 
had wholly forgotten it. 

VI 

One rarely loses one's personality in dreams ; it is rather 
intensified, with all the proper circumstances and relations of 
it, but I have had at least one dream in which I seemed 
to transcend my own circumstance and condition with re- 
markable completeness. Even my epoch, my precious 
present, I left behind (or ahead, rather), and in my unity 
with the persons of my dream I became strictly mediseval. 



I Talk of Dreams 323 

In fact, I have always called it my mediaeval dream, to 
such as I could get to listen to it; and it had for its scene 
a feudal tower in some waste place, a tower open at the top 
and with a deep, clear pool of water at the bottom, so that 
it instantly became known to me, as if I had always known 
it, for the Pool Tower. While I stood looking into it, in a 
mediaeval dress and a mediaeval mood, there came flying in 
at the open door of the ruin beside me the duke's hunchback, 
and after him, furious and shrieking maledictions, the 
swarthy beauty whom I was aware the duke was tired of. 
The keeping was now not only ducal, but thoroughly Italian, 
and it was suggested somehow to my own subtle Italian per- 
ception that the hunchback had been set on to tease the girl 
and provoke her so that she would turn upon him and try 
to wreak her fury on him and chase him into the Pool 
Tower and up the stone stairs that wound round its hollow 
to the top, where the solemn sky showed. The fearful spire 
of the steps was unguarded, and when I had lost the pair 
from sight, with the dwarf's mocking laughter and the girl's 
angry cries in my ears, there came fluttering from the height, 
like a bird wounded and whirling from a lofty tree, the 
figure of the girl, while far aloof the hunchback peered over 
at her fall. Midway in her descent her head struck against 
the edge of the steps, with a kish, such as an egg-shell makes 
when broken against the edge of a platter, and then plunged 
into the dark pool at my feet, where I could presently see 
her lying in the clear depths and the blood curling upward 
from the wound in her skull like a dark smoke. I was not 
sensible of any great pity; I accepted the affair, quite mediae- 
vally, as something that might very well have happened, 
given the girl, the duke and the dwarf, and the time and 
place. 

I am rather fond of a mediaeval setting for those 

" Dreams that wave before the half-shut eye," 



324 American Essays 

just closing for an afternoon nap. Then I invite to my vision 
a v^ide landscape, v^itli a cold, v^intry afternoon light upon 
it, and over this plain I have bands and groups of people 
scurrying, in mediaeval hose of divers colors and mediaeval 
leathern jerkins, hugging themselves against the frost, and 
very miserable. They affect me v^ith a profound compas- 
sion; they represent to me, somehov^, the vast mass of 
humanity, the mass that does the v^ork, and earns the bread, 
and goes cold and hungry through all the ages. I should be 
at a loss to say w^hy this was the effect, and I am utterly 
unable to say v^hy these fore-dreams, v^hich I partially 
solicit, should have such a tremendous significance as they 
seem to have. They are mostly of the most evanescent and 
intangible character, but they have one trait in common. 
They always involve the attribution of ethical motive and 
quality to material things, and in their passage through my 
brain they promise me a solution of the riddle of the painful 
earth in the very instant when they are gone forever. They 
are of innumerable multitude, chasing each other with the 
swiftness of light, and never staying to be seized by the 
memory, which seems already drugged with sleep before 
their course begins. One of these dreams, indeed, I did 
capture, and I found it to be the figure 8, but lying on its 
side, and in that posture involving the mystery and the 
revelation of the mystery of the universe. I leave the 
reader to imagine why. 

As we grow older, I think we are less and less able 
to remember our dreams. This is perhaps because the 
experience of youth is less dense, and the empty spaces 
of the young consciousness are more hospitable to these 
airy visitants. A few dreams of my later life stand out 
in strong relief, but for the most part they blend in an 
indistinguishable mass, and pass away with the actualities 
into a common oblivion. I should say that they were 



I Talk of Dreams 325 

more frequent with me than they used to be; it seems 
to me that now I dream whole nights through, and much 
more about the business of my waking life than formerly. 
As I earn my living by weaving a certain sort of dreams 
into literary form, it might be supposed that I would some 
time dream of the personages in these dreams, but I can- 
not remember that I have ever done so. The two kinds 
of inventing, the voluntary and the involuntary, seem abso- 
lutely and finally distinct. 

Of the prophetic dreams which people sometimes have 
I have mentioned the only one of mine which had any 
dramatic interest, but I have verified in my own experience 
the theory of Ribot that approaching disease sometimes inti- 
mates itself in dreams of the disorder impending, before it 
is otherwise declared in the organism. In actual sickness 
I think that I dream rather less than in health. I had a 
malarial fever when I was a boy, and I had a sort 
of continuous dream in it that distressed me greatly. 
It was of gliding down the school-house stairs without 
touching my feet to the steps, and this was indescribably 
appalling. 

The anguish of mind that one suffers from the imagi- 
nary dangers of dreams is probably of the same quality 
as that inspired by real peril in waking. A curious proof 
of this happened within my knowledge not many years ago. 
One of the neighbor's children was coasting down a long 
hill with- a railroad at the foot of it, and as he neared the 
bottom an express-train rushed round the curve. The flag- 
man ran forward and shouted to the boy to throw himself 
off his sled, but he kept on and ran into the locomotive, 
and was so hurt that he died. His injuries, however, were 
to the spine, and they were of a kind that rendered him 
insensible to pain while he lived. He talked very clearly 
and calmly of his accident, and when he was asked why 



326 American Essays 

he did not throw himself off his sled, as the flag-man bade 
him, he said : '' / thought it was a dream." The reality 
had, through the mental stress, no doubt transmuted itself 
to the very substance of dreams, and he had felt the same 
kind and quality of suffering as he would have done if he 
had been dreaming. The Norwegian poet and novelist 
Bjornstjerne Bjornson was at my house shortly after this 
happened, and he was greatly struck by the psychological 
implications of the incident; it seemed to mean for him all 
sorts of possibilities in the obscure realm where it cast a 
fitful light. 

But such a glimmer soon fades, and the darkness thickens 
round us again. It is not with the blindfold sense of sleep 
that we shall ever find out the secret of life, I fancy, either 
in the dreams which seem personal to us each one, or those 
universal dreams which we apparently share with the whole 
race. Of the race-dream, as I may call it, there is one 
hardly less common than that dream of going about in- 
sufficiently clad, which I have already mentioned, and that 
is the dream of suddenly falling from some height and 
waking with a start. The experience before the start is 
extremely dim, and latterly I have condensed this dread 
almost as much as the preliminary passages of my burglar- 
dream. I am aware of nothing but an instant of danger, 
and then comes the jar or jolt that wakens me. Upon 
the whole, I find this a great saving of emotion, and I do 
not know but there is a tendency, as I grow older, to shorten 
up the detail of what may be styled the conventional dream, 
the dream which we have so often that it is like a story 
read before. Indeed, the plots of dreams are not much 
more varied than the plots of romantic novels, which are 
notoriously stale and hackneyed. It would be interesting, 
and possibly important, if some observer would note the 
recurrence of this sort of dreams and classify their varie- 



I Talk of Dreams 327 

ties. I think we should all be astonished to find how few 
and slight the variations were. 



VII 



If I come to speak of dreams concerning the dead, it 
must be with a tenderness and awe that all who have had 
them will share with me. Nothing is more remarkable in 
them than the fact that the dead, though they are dead, 
yet live, and are, to our commerce with them, quite like 
all other living persons. We may recognize, and they may 
recognize, that they are no longer in the body, but they 
are as verily living as we are. This may be merely an 
effect from the doctrine of immortality which we all hold 
or have held, and yet I would fain believe that it may be 
something like proof of it. No one really knows, or can 
know, but one may at least hope, without offending science, 
which indeed no longer frowns so darkly upon faith. This 
persistence of life in those whom we mourn as dead, may 
not it be a witness of the fact that the consciousness cannot 
accept the notion of death at all, and, 

" Whatever crazy sorrow saith," 
that we have never truly felt them lost? Sometimes those 
who have died come back in dreams as parts of a common 
life which seems never to have been broken ; the old circle 
is restored without a flaw ; but whether they do this, or 
whether it is acknowledged between them and us that they 
have died, and are now disembodied spirits, the effect of 
life is the same. Perhaps in those dreams they and we 
are alike disembodied spirits, and the soul of the dreamer, 
which so often seems to abandon the body to the animal, is 
then the conscious entity, the thing which the dreamer feels 
to be himself, and is mingling with the souls of the de- 



328 American Essays 

parted on something like the terms which shall hereafter 
be constant. 

I think very few of those who have lost their beloved 
have failed to receive some sign or message from them 
in dreams, and often it is of deep and abiding consola- 
tion. It may be that this is our anguish compelling the echo 
of love out of the darkness where nothing is, but it may be 
that there is something there which answers to our throe 
with pity and with longing like our own. Again, no one 
knows, but in a matter impossible of definite solution I 
will not refuse the comfort which belief can give. Un- 
belief can be no gain, and belief no loss. But those dreams 
are so dear, so sacred, so interwoven with the finest and 
tenderest tissues of our being that one cannot speak of them 
freely, or indeed more than most vaguely. It is enough to 
say that one has had them, and to know that almost every- 
one else has had them, too. They seem to be among the 
universal dreams, and a strange quality of them is that, 
though they deal with a fact of universal doubt, they are, 
to my experience at least, not nearly so fantastic or capri- 
cious as the dreams that deal with the facts of every-day 
life and with the affairs of people still in this world. 

I do not know whether it is common to dream of faces 
or figures strange to our waking knowledge, but occasion- 
ally I have done this. I suppose it is much the same kind 
of invention that causes the person we dream of to say or 
do a thing unexpected to us. But this is rather common, 
and the creation of a novel aspect, the physiognomy of a 
stranger, in the person we dream of, is rather rare. In all 
my dreams I can recall but one presence of the kind. I have 
never dreamed of any sort of monster foreign to my knowl- 
edge, or even of any grotesque thing made up of elements 
familiar to it; the grotesqueness has always been in the 
motive or circumstance of the dream. I have very seldom 



I Talk of Dreams 329 

dreamed of animals, though once, when I was a boy, for 
a time after I had passed a corn-field where there were 
some bundles of snakes, writhen and knotted together in 
the cold of an early spring day, I had dreams infested by 
like images of those loathsome reptiles. I suppose that 
everyone has had dreams of finding his way through un- 
namable filth and of feeding upon hideous carnage; these 
are clearly the punishment of gluttony, and are the fumes 
of a rebellious stomach. 

I have heard people say they have sometimes dreamed 
of a thing, and awakened from their dream and then fallen 
asleep and dreamed of the same thing; but I believe that 
this is all one continuous dream; that they did not really 
awaken, but only dreamed that they awakened. I have 
never had any such dream, but at one time I had a recur- 
rent dream, which was so singular that I thought no one 
else had ever had a recurrent dream till I proved that it 
was rather common by starting the inquiry in the Con- 
tributors' Club in the Atlantic Monthly, when I found that 
great numbers of people have recurrent dreams. My own 
recurrent dreams began to come during the first year of 
my consulate at Venice, where I had hoped to find the 
same kind of poetic dimness on the phases of American 
life, which I wished to treat in literature, as the distance 
in time would have given. I should not wish any such dim- 
ness now ; but those were my romantic days, and I was 
sorely baffled by its absence. The disappointment began 
to haunt my nights as well as my days, and a dream 
repeated itself from week to week for a matter of eight 
or ten months to one effect. I dreamed that I had gone 
home to America, and that people met me and said, '' Why, 
you have given up your place ! " and I always answered : 
" Certainly not ; I haven't done at all what I mean to do 
there, yet. I am only here on my ten days' leave." I meant 



330 American Essays 

the ten days which a consul might take each quarter with- 
out applying to the Department of State ; and then I would 
reflect how impossible it was that I should make the visit 
in that time. I saw that I should be found out and dis- 
missed from my office and publicly disgraced. Then, sud- 
denly, I was not consul at Venice, and had not been, but 
consul at Delhi, in India; and the distress I felt would all 
end in a splendid Oriental phantasmagory of elephants and 
native princes, with their retinues in procession, which I 
suppose was mostly out of my reading of De Quincey. This 
dream, with no variation that I can recall, persisted till I 
broke it up by saying, in the morning after it had recurred, 
that I had dreamed that dream again; and so it began to 
fade away, coming less and less frequently, and at last 
ceasing altogether. 

I am rather proud of that dream; it is really my battle- 
horse among dreams, and I think I will ride away on it. 



[From Impressions and Experiences, by W. D. Howells, Copy- 
right, 1896, by W. D. Howells.] 



AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE 

John Burroughs 

There is no creature with which man has surrounded 
himself that seems so much like a product of civilization, 
so much like the result of development on special lines and 
in special fields, as the honey-bee. Indeed, a colony of 
bees, with their neatness and love of order, their division of 
labor, their public-spiritedness, their thrift, their complex 
economies, and their inordinate love of gain, seems as far 
removed from a condition of rude nature as does a walled 
city or a cathedral town. Our native bee, on the other 
hand, the " burly, dozing bumblebee," affects one more like 
the rude, untutored savage. He has learned nothing from 
experience. He lives from hand to mouth. He luxuriates 
in time of plenty, and he starves in times of scarcity. He 
lives in a rude nest, or in a hole in the ground, and in small 
communities ; he builds a few deep cells or sacks in which 
he stores a little honey and bee-bread for his young, but 
as a worker in wax he is of the most primitive and awk- 
ward. The Indian regarded the honey-bee as an ill-omen. 
She was the white man's fly. In fact she was the epitome 
of the white man himself. She has the white man's crafti- 
ness, his industry, his architectural skill, his neatness and 
love of system, his foresight; and, above all, his eager, 
miserly habits. The honey-bee's great ambition is to be 
rich, to lay up great stores, to possess the sweet of every 
flower that blooms. She is more than provident. Enough 
will not satisfy her; she must have all she can get by hook 

331 



33^ American Essays 

or by crook. She comes from the oldest country, Asia, 
and thrives best in the most fertile and long-settled 
lands. 

Yet the fact remains that the honey-bee is essentially a 
wild creature, and never has been and cannot be thor- 
oughly domesticated. Its proper home is the woods, 
and thither every new swarm counts on going; and thither 
many do go in spite of the care and watchfulness of the 
bee-keeper. If the woods in any given locality are deficient, 
in trees with suitable cavities, the bees resort to all sorts 
of makeshifts ; they go into chimneys, into barns and out- 
houses, under stones, into rocks, and so forth. Several 
chimneys in my locality with disused flues are taken pos- 
session of by colonies of bees nearly every season. One 
day, while bee-hunting, I developed a line that went toward 
a farmhouse where I had reason to believe no bees were 
kept. I followed it up and questioned the farmer about 
his bees. He said he kept no bees, but that a swarm had 
taken possession of his chimney, and another had gone under 
the clapboards in the gable end of his house. ^ He had 
taken a large lot of honey out of both places the year before. 
Another farmer told me that one day his family had seen 
a number of bees examining a knothole in the side of his 
house; the next day, as they were sitting down to dinner, 
their attention was attracted by a loud humming noise, when 
they discovered a swarm of bees settling upon the side of 
the house and pouring into the knothole. In subsequent 
years other swarms came to the same place. 

Apparently every swarm of bees, before it leaves the 
parent hive, sends out exploring parties to look up the 
future home. The woods and groves are searched through 
and through, and no doubt the privacy of many a squirrel 
and many a wood-mouse is intruded upon. What cozy 
nooks and retreats they do spy out, so much more attractive 



An Idyl of the Honey-Bee 333 

than the painted hive in the garden, so much cooler in sum- 
mer and so much warmer in winter! 

The bee is in the main an honest citizen: she prefers 
legitimate to illegitimate business; she is never an outlaw 
until her proper sources of supply fail; she will not touch 
honey as long as honey yielding flowers can be found; 
she always prefers to go to the fountain-head, and dislikes 
to take her sweets at second hand. But in the fall, after 
the flowers have failed, she can be tempted. The bee-hunter 
takes advantage of this fact; he betrays her with a little 
honey. He wants to steal her stores, and he first encour- 
ages her to steal his, then follows the thief home with her 
booty. This is the whole trick of the bee-hunter. The bees 
never suspect his game, else by taking a circuitous route 
they could easily baffle him. But the honey-bee has abso- 
lutely no wit or cunning outside of her special gifts as a 
gatherer and storer of honey. She is a simple-minded 
creature, and can be imposed upon by any novice. Yet it 
is not every novice that can find a bee-tree. The sportsman 
may track his game to its retreat by the aid of his dog, but 
in hunting the honey-bee one must be his own dog, and 
track his game through an element in which it leaves no 
trail. It is a task for a sharp, quick eye, and may test the 
resources of the best woodcraft. One autumn, when I 
devoted much time to this pursuit, as the best means of 
getting at nature and the open-air exhilaration, my eye be- 
came so trained that bees were nearly as easy to it as 
birds. I saw and heard bees wherever I went. One day, 
standing on a street corner in a great city, I saw above 
the trucks and the traffic a line of bees carrying of¥ sweets 
from some grocery or confectionery shop. 

One looks upon the woods with a new interest when 
he suspects they hold a colony of bees. What a pleasing 
secret it is, — a tree with a heart of comb honey, a decayed 



334 American Essays 

oak or maple with a bit of Sicily or Mount Hymettus stowed 
away in its trunk or branches ; secret chambers where lies 
hidden the wealth of ten thousand little freebooters, great 
nuggets and wedges of precious ore gathered with risk and 
labor from every field and wood about ! 

But if you would know the delights of bee-hunting, and 
how many sweets such a trip yields beside honey, come 
with me some bright, warm, late September or early Oc- 
tober day. It is the golden season of the year, and any 
errand or pursuit that takes us abroad upon the hills or 
by the painted woods and along the amber-colored streams 
at such a time is enough. So, with haversacks filled with 
grapes and peaches and apples and a bottle of milk, — for 
we shall not be home to dinner, — and armed with a com- 
pass, a hatchet, a pail, and a box with a piece of comb 
honey neatly fitted into it, — any box the size of your hand 
with a lid will do nearly as well as the elaborate and 
ingenious contrivance of the regular bee-hunter, — we sally 
forth. Our course at first lies along the highway under 
great chestnut-trees whose nuts are just dropping, then 
through an orchard and across a little creek, thence gently 
rising through a long series of cultivated fields toward some 
high uplying land behind which rises a rugged wooded ridge 
or mountain, the most sightly point in all this section. Be- 
hind this ridge for several miles the country is wild, wooded, 
and rocky, and is no doubt the home of many wild swarms 
of bees. What a gleeful uproar the robins, cedar-birds, 
high-holes, and cow blackbirds make amid the black cherry 
trees as we pass along ! The raccoons, too, have been here 
after black cherries, and we see their marks at various 
points. Several crows are walking about a newly sowed 
wheatfield we pass through, and we pause to note their 
graceful movements and glossy coats. I have seen no bird 
walk the ground with just the same air the crow does. It 



An Idyl of the Honey-Bee 335 

is not exactly pride; there is no strut or swagger in it, 
though perhaps just a Uttle condescension; it is the con- 
tented, complaisant, and self-possessed gait of a lord over 
his domains. All these acres are mine, he says, and all 
these crops ; men plow and sow for me, and I stay here 
or go there, and find life sweet and good wherever I am. 
The hawk looks awkward and out of place on the ground ; 
the game-birds hurry and skulk; but the crow is at home, 
and treads the earth as if there were none to molest or 
make him afraid. 

The crows we have always with us, but it is not every 
day or every season that one sees an eagle. Hence I must 
preserve the memory of one I saw the last day I went bee- 
hunting. As I was laboring up the side of a mountain 
at the head of a valley, the noble bird sprang from the top 
of a dry tree above me and came sailing directly over my 
head. I saw him bend his eye down upon me, and I could 
hear the low hum of his plumage as if the web of every 
quill in his great wings vibrated in his strong, level flight. 
I watched him as long as my eye could hold him. When he 
was fairly clear of the mountain he began that sweeping spiral 
movement in which he climbs the sky. Up and up he went, 
without once breaking his majestic poise, till he appeared 
to sight some far-ofif alien geography, when he bent his 
course thitherward and gradually vanished in the blue 
depths. The eagle is a bird of large ideas ; he embraces long 
distances ; the continent is his home. I never look upon 
one without emotion; I follow him with my eye as long 
as I can. I think of Canada, of the Great Lakes, of the 
Rocky Mountains, of the wild and sounding seacoast. The 
waters are his, and the woods and the inaccessible cliffs. 
He pierces behind the veil of the storm, and his joy is height 
and depth and vast spaces. 

We go out of our way to touch at a spring run in the 



336 American Essays 

edge of the woods, and are lucky to find a single scarlet 
lobelia lingering there. It seems almost to light up the 
gloom with its intense bit of color. Beside a ditch in a 
field beyond, we find the great blue lobelia, and near it, 
amid the weeds and wild grasses and purple asters, the 
most beautiful of our fall flowers, the fringed gentian. 
What a rare and delicate, almost aristocratic look the 
gentian has amid its coarse, unkempt surroundings ! It 
does not lure the bee, but it lures and holds every passing 
human eye. If we strike through the corner of yonder 
woods, where the ground is moistened by hidden springs, 
and where there is a little opening amid the trees, we shall 
find the closed gentian, a rare flower in this locality. I had 
walked this way many times before I chanced upon its 
retreat, and then I was following a line of bees. I lost 
the bees, but I got the gentians. How curious this flower 
looks with its deep blue petals folded together so tightly, — . 
a bud and yet a blossom ! It is the nun among our wild 
flowers, — a form closely veiled and cloaked. The buccaneer 
bumblebee sometimes tries to rifle it of its sweets. I have 
seen the blossom with the bee entombed in it. He had 
forced his way into the virgin corolla as if determined to 
know its secret, but he had never returned with the knowl- 
edge he had gained. 

After a refreshing walk of a couple of miles we reach 
a point where we will make our first trial, — a high stone 
wall that runs parallel with the wooded ridge referred to, 
and separated from it by a broad field. There are bees 
at work there on that goldenrod, and it requires but little 
manoeuvering to sweep one into our box. Almost any other 
creature rudely and suddenly arrested in its career, and 
clapped into a cage in this way, would show great confu- 
sion and alarm. The bee is alarmed for a moment, but 
the bee has a passion stronger than its love of life or fear 



An Idyl of the Honey-Bee 337 

of death, namely, desire for honey, not simply to eat, but 
to carry home as booty. " Such rage of honey in their 
bosom beats," says Virgil. It is quick to catch the scent 
of honey in the box, and as quick to fall to filling itself. 
We now set the box down upon the wall and gently remove 
the cover. The bee is head and shoulders in one of the 
half-filled cells, and is oblivious to everything else about 
it. -Come rack, come ruin, it will die at work. We step 
back a few paces, and sit down upon the ground so as 
to bring the box against the blue sky as a background. In 
two or three minutes the bee is seen rising slowly and 
heavily from the box. It seems loath to leave so much 
honey behind, and it marks the place well. It mounts aloft 
in a rapidly increasing spiral, surveying the near and 
minute objects first, then the larger and more distant, till, 
having circled above the spot five or six times and taken 
all its bearings, it darts away for home. It is a good eye 
that holds fast to the bee till it is fairly ofif. Sometimes 
one's head will swim following it, and often one's eyes are 
put out by the sun. This bee gradually drifts down the 
hill, then strikes away toward a farmhouse half a mile 
away where I know bees are kept. Then we try another 
and another, and the third bee, much to our satisfaction, 
goes straight toward the woods. We could see the brown 
speck against the darker background for many yards. The 
regular bee-hunter professes to be able to tell a wild bee 
from a tame one by the color, the former, he says, being 
lighter. But there is no difference ; they are both alike 
in color and in manner. Young bees are lighter than old, 
and that is all there is of it. If a bee lived many years 
in the woods it would doubtless come to have some distin- 
guishing marks, but the life of a bee is only a few months 
at the farthest, and no change is wrought in this brief time. 
Our bees are all soon back, and more with them, for we 



338 American Essays 

have touched the box here and there with the cork of a 
bottle of anise oil, and this fragrant and pungent oil will 
attract bees half a mile or more. When no flowers can be 
found, this is the quickest way to obtain a bee. 

It is a singular fact that when the bee first finds the 
hunter's box, its first feeling is one of anger ; it is as mad as a 
hornet ; its tone changes, it sounds its shrill war trumpet and 
darts to and fro, and gives vent to its rage and indignation 
in no uncertain manner. It seems to scent foul play at 
once. It says, '' Here is robbery ; here is the spoil of some 
hive, may be my own," and its blood is up. But its ruling 
passion soon comes to the surface, its avarice gets the better 
of its indignation, and it seems to say, ** Well, I had better 
take possession of this and carry it home." So after many 
feints and approaches and dartings off with a loud angry 
hum as if it would none of it, the bee settles down and fills 
itself. 

It does not entirely cool off and get soberly to work till 
it has made two or three trips home with its booty. When 
other bees come, even if all from the same swarm, they 
quarrel and dispute over the box, and clip and dart at each 
other like bantam cocks. Apparently the ill feeling which 
the sight of the honey awakens is not one of jealousy or 
rivalry, but wrath. 

A bee will usually make three or four trips from the 
hunter's box before it brings back a companion. I suspect 
the bee does not tell its fellows what it has found, but that 
they smell out the secret; it doubtless bears some evidence 
with it upon its feet or proboscis that it has been upon 
honeycomb and not upon flowers, and its companions take 
the hint and follow, arriving always many seconds behind. 
Then the quantity and quality of the booty would also 
betray it. No doubt, also, there are plenty of gossips about 
a hive that note and tell everything, ^' Oh, did you see 



An Idyl of the Honey-Bee 339 

that? Peggy Mel came in a few moments ago in great 
haste, and one of the upstairs packers says she was loaded 
till she groaned with apple-blossom honey, which she de- 
posited, and then rushed off again like mad. Apple-blossom 
honey in October ! Fee, fi, fo, f um ! I smell something ! 
Let's after." 

In about half an hour we have three well-defined lines 
of bees established, — two to farmhouses and one to the 
woods, and our box is being rapidly depleted of its honey. 
About every fourth bee goes to the woods, and now that 
they have learned the way thoroughly they do not make 
the long preliminary whirl above the box, but start directly 
from it. The woods are rough and dense and the hill 
steep, and we do not like to follow the line of bees until 
we have tried at least to settle the problem as to the distance 
they go into the woods, — whether the tree is on this side 
of the ridge or into the depth of the forest on the other 
side. So we shut up the box when it is full of bees and 
carry it about three hundred yards along the wall from 
which we are operating. When liberated, the bees, as they 
always will in such cases, go off in the same directions they 
have been going; they do not seem to know that they have 
been moved. But other bees have followed our scent, 
and it is not many minutes before a second line to the 
woods is established. This is called cross-lining the bees. 
The new line makes a sharp angle with the other line, and 
we know at once that the tree is only a few rods into the 
woods. The two lines we have established form two sides 
of a triangle of which the wall is the base ; at the apex of 
the triangle, or where the two lines meet in the woods, we 
are sure to find the tree. We quickly follow up these lines, 
and where they cross each other on the side of the hill we 
scan every tree closely. I pause at the foot of an oak and 
examine a, hole n^ar the root; now the bees are in this tree 



340 American Essays 

and their entrance is on the upper side near the ground not 
two feet from the hole I peer into, and yet so quiet and 
secret is their going and coming that I fail to discover them 
and pass on up the hill. Failing in this direction I return 
to the oak again, and then perceive the bees going out in 
a small crack in the tree. The bees do not know^ they are 
found out and that the game is in our hands, and are as 
oblivious of our presence as if wq wctq ants or crickets. 
The indications are that the swarm is a small one, and the 
store of honey trifling. In " taking up " a bee-tree it is 
usual first to kill or stupefy the bees with the fumes of 
burning sulphur or with tobacco smoke. But this course 
is impracticable on the present occasion, so we boldly and 
ruthlessly assault the tree with an ax we have procured. 
At the first blow the bees set up a loud buzzing, but we 
have no mercy, and the side of the cavity is soon cut away 
and the interior with its white-yellow mass of comb honey 
is exposed, and not a bee strikes a blow in defense of its 
all. This may seem singular, but it has nearly always been 
my experience. When a swarm of bees are thus rudely 
assaulted with an ax they evidently think the end of the 
world has come, and, like true misers as they are, each one 
seizes as much of the treasure as it can hold ; in other 
words, they all fall to and gorge themselves with honey, 
and calmly await the issue. While in this condition they 
make no defense, and will not sting unless taken hold of. 
In fact they are as harmless as flies. Bees are always to be 
managed with boldness and decision. Any half-way meas- 
ures, any timid poking about, any feeble attempts to reach 
their honey, are sure to be quickly resented. The popular 
notion that bees have a special antipathy toward certain 
persons and a liking for certain others has only this fact 
at the bottom of it: they will sting a person who is afraid 
of them and goes skulking and dodging about, and they will 



An Idyl of the Honey-Bee 341 

not sting a person who faces them boldly and has no dread 
of them. They are like dogs. The way to disarm a vicious 
dog is to show him you do not fear him; it is his turn to 
be afraid then. I never had any dread of bees and am 
seldom stung by them. I have climbed up into a large 
chestnut that contained a swarm in one of its cavities and 
chopped them out with an ax, being obliged at times to 
pause and brush the bewildered bees from my hands and 
face, and not been stung once. I have chopped a swarm 
out of an apple-tree in June, and taken out the cards of 
honey and arranged them in a hive, and then dipped out 
the bees with a dipper, and taken the whole home with me 
in pretty good condition, with scarcely any opposition on 
the part of the bees. In reaching your hand into the cavity 
to detach and remove the comb you are pretty sure to get 
stung, for when you touch the '' business end " of a bee, 
it will sting even though its head be off. But the bee carries 
the antidote to its own poison. The best remedy for bee 
sting is honey, and when your hands are besmeared with 
honey, as they are sure to be on such occasions, the wound 
is scarcely more painful than the prick of a pin. Assault 
your bee-tree, then, boldly with your ax, and you will find 
that when the honey is exposed every bee has surrendered 
and the whole swarm is cowering in helpless bewilder- 
ment and terror. Our tree yields only a few pounds of 
honey, not enough to have lasted the swarm till January, 
but no matter : we have the less burden to carry. 

In the afternoon we go nearly half a mile farther along 
the ridge to a cornfield that lies immediately in front of 
the highest point of the mountain. The view is superb; 
the ripe autumn landscape rolls away to the east, cut through 
by the great placid river; in the extreme north the wall of 
the Catskills stands out clear and strong, while in the south 
the mountains of the Highlands bound the view. The day 



342 American Essays 

is warm, and the bees are very busy there in that neglected 
corner of the field, rich in asters, fleabane, and goldenrod. 
The corn has been cut, and upon a stout but a few rods 
from the woods, which here drop quickly down from the 
precipitous heights, we set up our bee-box, touched again 
with the pungent oil. In a few moments a bee has found 
it; she comes up to leeward, following the scent. On 
leaving the box, she goes straight toward the woods. More 
bees quickly come, and it is not long before the line is well 
established. Now we have recourse to the same tactics we 
employed before, and move along the ridge to another 
field to get our cross line. But the bees still go in almost 
the same direction they did from the corn stout. The tree 
is then either on the top of the mountain or on the other 
or west side of it. We hesitate to make the plunge into 
the woods and seek to scale those precipices, for the eye 
can plainly see what is before us. As the afternoon sun 
gets lower, the bees are seen with wonderful distinctness. 
They fly toward and under the sun, and are in a strong 
light, while the near woods which form the background are 
in deep shadow. They look like large luminous motes. 
Their swiftly vibrating, transparent wings surround their 
bodies with a shining nimbus that make's them visible for 
a long distance. They seem magnified many times. We 
see them bridge the little gulf between us and the woods, 
then rise up over the treetops with their burdens, swerving 
neither to the right hand nor to the left. It is almost 
pathetic to see them labor so, climbing the mountain and 
unwittingly guiding us to their treasures. When the sun 
gets down so that his direction corresponds exactly with 
the course of the bees, we make the plunge. It proves even 
harder climbing than we had anticipated ; the mountain is 
faced by a broken and irregular wall of rock, up which 
we pull ourselves slowly and cautiously by main strength, 



An Idyl of the Honey-Bee 343 

In half an hour, the perspiration streaming from every 
pore, we reach the summit. The trees here are all small, 
a second growth, and we are soon convinced the bees are 
not here. Then down we go on the other side, clambering 
down the rocky stairways till we reach quite a broad plateau 
that forms something like the shoulder of the mountain. 
On the brink of this there are many large hemlocks, and 
we scan them closely and rap upon them with our ax. 
But not a bee is seen or heard; we do not seem as near 
the tree as we were in the fields below ; yet, if some divinity 
would only whisper the fact to us, we are within a few 
rods of the coveted prize, which is not in one of the large 
hemlocks or oaks that absorb our attention, but^ in an old 
stub or stump not six feet high, and which we have seen 
and passed several times without giving it a thought. We 
go farther down the mountain and beat about to the right 
and left, and get entangled in brush and arrested by preci- 
pices, and finally, as the day is nearly spent, give up the 
search and leave the woods quite baffled, but resolved to re- 
turn on the morrow. The next day we come back and com- 
mence operations in an opening in the woods well down on 
the side of the mountain where we gave up the search. Our 
box is soon swarming with the eager bees, and they go back 
toward the summit we have passed. We follow back and 
establish a new line, where the ground will permit; then 
another and still another, and yet the riddle is not solved. 
One time we are south of them, then north, then the bees 
get up through the trees and we cannot tell where they go. 
But after much searching, and after the mystery seems 
rather to deepen than to clear up, we chance to pause beside 
the old stump. A bee comes out of a small opening like 
that made by ants in decayed wood, rubs its eyes and ex- 
amines its antennae, as bees always do before leaving their 
hive, then takes flight, At the same instant several bees 



344 American Essays 

come by us loaded with our honey and settle home with 
that peculiar low, complacent buzz of the well-filled insect. 
Here, then, is our idyl, our bit of Virgil and Theocritus, 
in a decayed stump of a hemlock-tree. We could tear it 
open with our hands, and a bear would find it an easy prize, 
and a rich one, too, for we take from it fifty pounds of ex- 
cellent honey. The bees have been here many years, and 
have of course sent out swarm after swarm into the wilds. 
They have protected themselves against the weather and 
strengthened their shaky habitation by a copious use of 
wax. 

When a bee-tree is thus " taken up " in the middle of 
the day, of course a good many bees are away from home 
and have not heard the news. When they return and find 
the ground flowing with honey, and piles of bleeding combs 
lying about, they apparently do not recognize the place, and 
their first instinct is to fall to and fill themselves ; this done, 
their next thought is to carry it home, so they rise up slowly 
through the branches of the trees till they have attained an 
altitude that enables them to survey the scene, when they 
seem to say,, " Why, this is home," and down they come 
again ; beholding the wreck and ruins once more, they still 
think there is some mistake, and get up a second or a third 
time and then drop back pitifully as before. It is the most 
pathetic sight of all, the surviving and bewildered bees 
struggling to save a few drops of their wasted treasures. 

Presently, if there is another swarm in the woods, robber 
bees appear. You may know them by their saucy, chiding, 
devil-may-care hum. It is an ill wind that blows nobody 
good, and they make the most of the misfortune of their 
neighbors, and thereby pave the way for their own ruin. 
The hunter marks their course and the next day looks 
them up. On this occasion the day was hot and the honey 
very fragrant, and a line of bees was soon established 



An Idyl of the Honey-Bee 345 

S. S. W. Though there was much refuse honey in the old 
stub, and though little golden rills trickled down the hill 
from it, and the near branches and saplings were besmeared 
with it where we wiped our murderous hands, yet not a drop 
was wasted. It was a feast to which not only honey-bees 
came, but bumblebees, wasps, hornets, flies, ants. The 
bumblebees, which at this season are hungry vagrants with 
no fixed place of abode, would gorge themselves, then creep 
beneath the bits of empty comb or fragments of bark and 
pass the night, and renew the feast next day. The bumble- 
bee is an insect of which the bee-hunter sees much. There 
are all sorts and sizes of them. They are dull and clumsy 
compared with the honey-bee. Attracted in the fields by 
the bee-hunter*s box, they will come up the wind on the 
scent and blunder into it in the most stupid, lubberly 
fashion. 

The honey-bees that licked up our leavings on the old 
stub belonged to a swarm, as it proved, about half a mile 
farther down the ridge, and a few days afterward fate 
overtook them, and their stores in turn became the prey 
of another swarm in the vicinity, which also tempted Provi- 
dence and were overwhelmed. The first-mentioned swarm 
I had lined from several points, and was following up the 
clew over rocks and through gulleys, when I came to where 
a large hemlock had been felled a few years before, and 
a swarm taken from a cavity near the top of it ; fragments 
of the old comb were yet to be seen. A few yards away 
stood another short, squatty hemlock, and I said my bees 
ought to be there. As I paused near it, I noticed where 
the tree had been wounded with an ax a couple of feet 
from the ground many years before. The wound had par- 
tially grown over, but there was an opening there that I 
did not see at the first glance. I was about to pass on when 
a bee passed me making that peculiar shrill, discordant hum 



346 American Essays 

that a bee makes when besmeared with honey. I saw it 
alight in the partially closed wound and crawl home; then 
came others and others, little bands and squads of them 
heavily freighted with honey from the box. The tree was 
about twenty inches through and hollow at the butt, or 
from the ax-mark down. This space the bees had com- 
pletely filled with honey. With an ax we cut away the outer 
ring of live wood and exposed the treasure. Despite the 
utmost care, we wounded the comb so that little rills of the 
golden liquid issued from the root of the tree and trickled 
down the hill. 

The other bee-tree in the vicinity to which I have referred 
we found one warm November day in less than half an hour 
after entering the woods. It also was a hemlock that stood 
in a niche in a wall of hoary, moss-covered rocks thirty feet 
high. The tree hardly reached to the top of the precipice. 
The bees entered a small hole at the root, which was seven 
or eight feet from the ground. The position was a striking 
one. Never did apiary have a finer outlook or more rugged 
surroundings. A black, wood-embraced lake lay at our feet ; 
the long panorama of the Catskills filled the far distance, 
and the more broken outlines of the Shawangunk range 
filled the rear. On every hand were precipices and a wild 
confusion of rocks and trees. 

The cavity occupied by the bees was about three feet 
and a half long and eight or ten inches in diameter. With 
an ax we cut away one side of the tree, and laid bare its 
curiously wrought heart of honey. It was a most pleasing 
sight. What winding and devious ways the bees had 
through their palace ! What great masses and blocks of 
snow-white comb there were ! Where it was sealed up, 
presenting that slightly dented, uneven surface, it looked 
like some precious ore. When we carried a large pailful 
of it out of the woods it seemed still more like ore. 



An Idyl of the Honey-Bee 347 

Your native bee-hunter predicates the distance of the tree 
by the time the bee occupies in making its first trip. But 
this is no certain guide. You are always safe in calculating 
that the tree is inside of a mile, and you need not as a 
rule look for your bee's return under ten minutes. One 
day I picked up a bee in an opening in the woods and gave 
it honey, and it made three trips to my box with an interval 
of about twelve minutes between them; it returned alone 
each time; the tree, which I afterward found, was about 
half a mile distant. 

In lining bees through the woods the tactics of the hunter 
are to pause every twenty or thirty rods, lop away the 
branches or cut down the trees, and set the bees to work 
again. If they still go forward, he goes forward also and 
repeats his observations till the tree is found, or till the 
bees turn and come back upon the trail. Then he knows 
he has passed the tree, and he retraces his steps to a con- 
venient distance and tries again, and thus quickly reduces 
the space to be looked over till the swarm is traced home. 
On one occasion, in a wild rocky wood, where the surface 
alternated between deep gulfs and chasms filled with thick, 
heavy growths of timber and sharp, precipitous, rocky 
ridges like a tempest-tossed sea, I carried my bees directly 
under their tree, and set them to work from a high, exposed 
ledge of rocks not thirty feet distant. One would have 
expected them under such circumstances to have gone 
straight home, as there were but few branches intervening, 
but they did not; they labored up through the trees and 
attained an altitude above the woods as if they had miles 
to travel, and thus baffled me for hours. Bees will always 
do this. They are acquainted with the woods only from 
the top side, and from the air above; they recognize home 
only by landmarks here, and in every instance they rise aloft 
to take their bearings. Think how familiar to them the 



348 American Essays 

topography of the forest summits must be, — an umbrageous 
sea or plain where every mark and point is known. 

Another curious fact is that generally you will get track 
of a bee-tree sooner when you are half a mile from it than 
when you are only a few yards. Bees, like us human in- 
sects, have little faith in the near at hand ; they expect to 
make their fortune in a distant field, they are lured by the 
remote and the difficult, and hence overlook the flower and 
the sweet at their very door. On several occasions I have 
unwittingly set my box within a few paces of a bee-tree and 
waited long for bees without getting them, when, on remov- 
ing to a distant field or opening in the woods, I have got a 
clew at once. 

I have a theory that when bees leave the hive, unless 
there is some special attraction in some other direction, they 
generally go against the wind. They would thus have the 
wind with them when they returned home heavily laden, 
and with these little navigators the difference is an im- 
portant one. With a full cargo, a stiff head-wind is a great 
hindrance, but fresh and empty-handed they can face it 
with more ease. Virgil says bees bear gravel stones as 
ballast, but their only ballast is their honey-bag. Hence, 
when I go bee-hunting, I prefer to get to windward 
of the woods in which the swarm is supposed to have 
refuge. 

Bees, like the milkman, like to be near a spring. They 
do water their honey, especially in a dry time. The liquid is 
then of course thicker and sweeter, and will bear diluting. 
Hence old bee-hunters look for bee-trees along creeks and 
near spring runs in the woods. I once found a tree a long 
distance from any water, and the honey had a peculiar 
bitter flavor, imparted to it, I was convinced, by rainwater 
sucked from the decayed and spongy hemlock-tree in which 
the swarm was found. In cutting into the tree, the north 



An Idyl of the Honey-Bee 349 

side of it was found to be saturated with water like a 
spring, which ran out in big drops, and had a bitter flavor. 
The bees had thus found a spring or a cistern in their 
own house. 

Bees are exposed to many hardships and many dangers. 
Winds and storms prove as disastrous to them as to other 
navigators. Black spiders lie in wait for them as do brigands 
for travelers. One day, as I was looking for a bee amid 
some goldenrod, I spied one partly concealed under a leaf. 
Its baskets were full of pollen, and it did not move. On 
lifting up the leaf I discovered that a hairy spider was am- 
bushed there and had the bee by the throat. The vampire 
was evidently afraid of the bee's sting, and was holding it 
by the throat till quite sure of its death. Virgil speaks of 
the painted lizard, perhaps a species of salamander, as an 
enemy of the honey-bee. We have no lizard that destroys 
the bee ; but our tree-toad, ambushed among the apple and 
cherry blossoms, snaps them up wholesale. Quick as light- 
ning that subtle but clammy tongue darts forth, and the 
unsuspecting bee is gone. Virgil also accuses the titmouse 
and the woodpecker of preying upon the bees, and our 
kingbird has been charged with the like crime, but the 
latter devours only the drones. The workers are either 
too small and quick for it or else it dreads their sting. 

Virgil, by the way, had little more than a child's knowl- 
edge of the honey-bee. There is little fact and much fable 
in his fourth Georgic. If he had ever kept bees himself, 
or even visited an apiary, it is hard to see how he could 
have believed that the bee in its flight abroad carried a gravel 
stone for ballast. 

" And as when empty barks on billows float, 
With sandy ballast sailors trim the boat; 
So bees bear gravel stones, whosp noising weight 
Steers through the whistlm^ winds their steady flight;" 



350 American Essays 

or that, when two colonies made war upon each other, they 
issued forth from their hives led by their kings and fought 
in the air, strewing the ground with the dead and dying : — 

"Hard hailstones lie not thicker on the plain, 
Nor shaken oaks such show'rs of acorns rain." 

It is quite certain he had never been bee-hunting. If he 
had we should have had a fifth Georgic. Yet he seems 
to have known that bees sometimes escaped to the woods : — 

" Nor bees are lodged in hives alone, but found 
In chambers of their own beneath the ground : 
Their vaulted roofs are hung in pumices, 
And in the rotten trunks of hollow trees." 

Wild honey is as near like tame as wild bees are like their 
brothers in the hive. The only difference is, that wild honey 
is flavored with your adventure, which makes it a little 
more delectable than the domestic article. 



[From Pepacton, by John Burroughs. Copyright, 1881, 1895, and 
1909, by John Burroughs.] 



CUT-OFF COPPLES'S 
Clarence King 

One October day, as Kaweah and I traveled by ourselves 
over a lonely foothill trail, I came to consider myself the 
friend of woodpeckers. With rather more reserve as re- 
gards the blue jay, let me admit great interest in his v^orldly 
wisdom. As an instance of co-operative living the part- 
nership of these two birds is rather more hopeful than 
most mundane experiments. For many autumn and winter 
months such food as their dainty taste chooses is so rare 
throughout the Sierras that in default of any climatic temp- 
tation to migrate the birds get in harvests with annual 
regularity and surprising labor. Oak and pine mingle in 
open growth. Acorns from the one are their grain; the 
soft pine bark is granary ; and this the process : 

Armies of woodpeckers drill small, round holes in the 
bark of standing pine-trees, sometimes perforating it thickly 
up to twenty or thirty and even forty feet above the ground ; 
then about equal numbers of woodpeckers and jays gather 
acorns, rejecting always the little cup, and insert the gland 
tightly in the pine bark with its tender base outward and 
exposed to the air. 

A woodpecker, having drilled a hole, has its exact meas- 
ure in mind, and after examining a number of acorns makes 
his selection, and never fails of a perfect fit. Not so the 
jolly, careless jay, who picks up any sound acorn he finds, 
and, if it is too large for a hole, drops it in the most off- 
hand way as if it were an affair of no consequence; utters 

351 



352 . American Essays 

one of his dry, chuckling squawks, and either tries another 
or loafs about, lazily watching the hard-working wood- 
peckers. 

Thus they live, amicably harvesting, and with this sequel : 
those acorns in which grubs form become the sole property 
of woodpeckers, while all sound ones fall to the jays. Ordi- 
narily chances are in favor of woodpeckers, and when there 
are absolutely no sound nuts the jays sell short, to to speak, 
and go over to Nevada and speculate in juniper-berries. 

The monotony of hill and glade failing to interest me, 
and in default of other diversion^ I all day long watched the 
birds, recalling how many gay and successful jays I knew 
who lived, as these, on the wit and industry of less osten- 
tatious woodpeckers; thinking, too, what naively dogmatic 
and richly worded political economy Mr. Ruskin would 
phrase from my feathered friends. Thus I came to Ruskin, 
wishing I might see the work of his idol, and after that 
longing for some equal artist who should arise and choose 
to paint our Sierras as they are with all their color-glory, 
power of innumerable pine and countless pinnacle, gloom 
of tempest, or splendor, where rushing light shatters itself 
upon granite crag, or burns in dying rose upon far fields 
of snow. 

Had I rubbed Aladdin's lamp? A turn in the trail 
brought suddenly into view a man who sat under shadow 
of oaks, painting upon a large canvas. 

As I approached, the artist turned half round upon his 
stool, rested palette and brushes upon one knee, and in 
familiar tone said, '' Dern'd if you ain't just naturally 
ketched me at it ! Get off and set down. You ain't going 
for no doctor, I know." 

My artist was of short, good-natured, butcher-boy 
make-up, dressed in what had formerly been black broad- 
cloth, with an enlivening show of red flannel shirt about 



Cut-off Copples's 353 

the throat, wrists, and a considerable display of the same 
where his waistcoat might once have overlapped a strained 
but as yet coherent waistband. The cut of these garments, 
by length of coat-tail and voluminous leg, proudly asserted 
a " Bay " origin. His small feet were squeezed into tight, 
short boots, with high, raking heels. 

A round face, with small, full mouth, non-committal nose, 
and black, protruding eyes, showed no more sign of the ideal 
temperament than did the broad daub upon his square 
yard of canvas. 

" Going to Copples's ? " inquired my friend. 

That was my destination, and I answered, " Yes." 

'' That's me," he ejaculated. " Right over there, down 
below those two oaks ! Ever there ? " 

"No." 

'' My studio 's there now ;" giving impressive accent to 
the word. 

All the while these few words were passing he scruti- 
nized me with unconcealed curiosity, puzzled, as well he 
might be, by my dress and equipment. Finally, after I 
had tied Kaweah to a tree and seated myself by the easel, 
and after he had absently rubbed some raw sienna into 
his little store of white, he softly ventured : " Was you look- 
ing out a ditch ? " 

" No," I replied. 

He neatly rubbed up the white and sienna with his 
" blender," unconsciously adding a dash of Veronese green, 
gazed at my leggings, then at the barometer, and again 
meeting my eye with a look as if he feared I might be a 
disguised duke, said in slow tone, with hyphens of silence 
between each two syllables, giving to his language all the 
dignity of an unabridged Webster, " I would take pleasure 
in stating that my name is Hank G. Smith, artist ; " 
and, seeing me smile, he relaxed a little, and, giving the 



354 American Essays 

blender another vigorous twist, added, " I would request 
yours." 

Mr. Smith having learned my name, occupation, and that 
my home was on the Hudson, near New York, quickly 
assumed a familiar me-and-you-old-fel' tone, and rattled 
on merrily about his winter in New York spent in '' going 
through the Academy," — a period of deep moment to one 
who before that painted only wagons for his livelihood. 

Storing away canvas, stool, and easel in a deserted cabin 
close by, he rejoined me, and, leading Kaweah by his 
lariat, I walked beside Smith down the trail toward 
Copples's. 

He talked freely, and as if composing his own biography, 
beginning : 

" California-born and mountain-raised, his nature soon 
drove him into a painter's career." Then he reverted fondly 
to New York and his experience there. 

" Oh, no ! " he mused in pleasant irony, " he never spread 
his napkin over his legs and partook French victuals up to 
old Delmonico's. 'Twasn't H. G. which took her to the 
theater." 

In a sort of stage-aside to me, he added, "She was a 
model! Stood for them sculptors, you know; perfectly 
virtuous, and built from the ground up." Then, as if words 
failed him, made an expressive gesture with both hands 
over his shirt-bosom to indicate the topography of her 
figure, and, sliding them down sharply against his waist- 
band, he added, " Anatomical torso ! " 

Mr. Smith found relief in meeting one so near himself, 
as he conceived me to be, in habit and experience. The 
long-pent-up emotions and ambitions of his life found ready 
utterance, and a willing listener. 

I learned that his aim was to become a characteristically 
California painter, with special designs for making himself 



Cut-off Copples's 355 

famous as the delineator of mule-trains and ox-wagons ; to 
be, as he expressed it, " the Pacific Slope Bonheur." 

" There," he said, " is old Eastman Johnson ; he's made 
the riffle on barns, and that everlasting girl with the ears 
of corn ; but it ain't life, it ain't got the real git-up. 

" If you want to see the thing, just look at a Gerome ; his 
Arab folks and Egyptian dancing-girls, they ain't assuming 
a pleasant expression and looking at spots while their like- 
nesses is took. 

" H. G. will discount Eastman yet." 

He avowed his great admiration of Church, which, with 
a little leaning toward Mr. Gifford, seemed his only hearty 
approval. 

" It's all Bierstadt, and Bierstadt, and Bierstadt nowa- 
days ! What has he done but twist and skew and distort and 
discolor and belittle and be-pretty this whole dog-gonned 
country? Why, his mountains are too high and too slim; 
they'd blow over in one of our fall winds. 

" I've herded colts two summers in Yosemite, and honest 
now, when I stood right up in front of his picture, I didn't 
know it. 

" He hasn't what old Ruskin calls for.'* 

By this time the station buildings were in sight, and far 
down the canon, winding in even grade round spur after 
spur, outlined by a low, clinging cloud of red dust, we 
could see the great Sierra mule-train, — that industrial gulf- 
stream flowing from California plains over into arid Ne- 
vada, carrying thither materials for life and luxury. In 
a vast, perpetual caravan of heavy wagons, drawn by 
teams of from eight to fourteen mules, all the supplies 
of many cities and villages were hauled across the Si- 
erra at an immense cost, and with such skill of driv- 
ing and generalship of mules as the world has never seen 
before. 



356 American Essays 

Our trail descended toward the grade, quickly bringing 
us to a high bank immediately overlooking the trains a 
few rods below the group of station buildings. 

I had by this time learned that Copples, the former 
station-proprietor, had suffered am.putation of the leg three 
times, receiving from the road men, in consequence, the 
name of " Cut-off," and that, while his doctors disagreed 
as to whether they had better try a fourth, the kindly hand 
of death had spared him that pain, and Mrs. Copples an 
added extortion in the bill. 

The dying '' Cut-off " had made his wife promise she 
would stay by and carry on the station until all his debts, 
which were many and heavy, should be paid, and then do 
as she chose. 

The poor woman, a New Englander of some refinement, 
lingered, sadly fulfilling her task, though longing for 
liberty. 

When Smith came to speak of Sarah Jane, her niece, a 
new light kindled in my friend's eye. 

" You never saw Sarah Jane ? " he inquired. 

I shook my head. 

He went on to tell me that he was living in hope of mak- 
ing her Mrs. H. G., but that the bar-keeper also indulged 
a hope, and as this important functionary was a man of 
ready cash, and of derringers and few words, it became 
a delicate matter to avow open rivalry; but it was evident 
my friend's star was ascendant, and, learning that he con- 
sidered himself to possess the " dead-wood,"' and to have 
*' gaited " the bar-keeper, I was more than amused, even 
comforted. 

It was pleasure to sit there leaning against a vigorous 
old oak while Smith opened his heart to me, in easy con- 
fidence, and, with quick eye watching the passing mules, 
penciled in a little sketch-book a leg, a head, or such por- 



Cut-off Copples's 357 

tions of body and harness as seemed to him useful for 
future works. 

" These are notes," he said, '' and I've pretty much made 
up my mind to paint my great picture on a gee-pull. I'll 
scumble in a sunset effect, lighting up the dust, and striking 
across the backs of team and driver, and I'll paint a com.e- 
up-there-d'n-you look on the old teamster's face, and the 
mules will be just a-humping their little selves and laying 
down to work like they'd expire. And the wagon! Don't 
you see what fine color-material there is in the heavy load 
and canvas-top with sunlight and shadow in the folds? 
And that's what's the matter with H. G. Smith. 

''Orders, sir, orders; that's what I'll get then, and I'll 
take my little old Sarah Jane and light out for New York, 
and you'll' see Smith on a studio doorplate, and folks '11 
say, ' Fine feeling for nature, has Smith ! ' " 

I let this singular man speak for himself in his own ver- 
nacular, pruning nothing of its idiom or slang, as you shall 
choose to call it. In this faithful transcript there are words 
I could have wished to expunge, but they are his, not mine, 
and illustrate his mental construction. 

The breath of most Californians is as unconsciously 
charged with slang as an Italian's of garlic, and the 
two, after all, have much the same function ; you touch 
the bowl or your language, but should never let either be 
fairly recognized in salad or conversation. But Smith's 
English was the well undefiled when compared with 
v/hat I every moment heard from the current of team- 
sters which set constantly by us in the direction of 
Copples's. 

Close in front came a huge wagon piled high with cases 
of freight, and drawn along by a team of twelve mules, 
whose heavy breathing and drenched skins showed them 
hard-worked and well tired out. The driver looked 



358 American Essays 

anxiously ahead at a soft spot in the road, and on at the 
station, as if calculating whether his team had courage left 
to haul through. 

He called kindly to them, cracked his black-snake whip, 
and all together they strained bravely on. 

The great van rocked, settled a little on the near side, 
and stuck fast. 

With a look of despair the driver got ofT and laid the 
lash freely among his team; they jumped and jerked, fran- 
tically tangled themselves up, and at last all sulked and be- 
came stubbornly immovable. Meanwhile, a mile of teams 
behind, unable to pass on the narrow grade, came to an 
unwilling halt. 

About five wagons back I noticed a tall Pike, dressed 
in checked shirt, and pantaloons tucked into jack-boots. 
A soft felt hat, worn on the back of his head, displayed 
long locks of flaxen hair, which hung freely about a florid 
pink countenance, noticeable for its pair of violent little 
blue eyes, and facial angle rendered acute by a sharp, long 
nose. 

This fellow watched the stoppage with impatience, and 
at last, when it was more than he could bear, walked up 
by the other teams with a look of wrath absolutely devilish. 
One would have expected him to blow up with rage; yet 
withal his gait and manner were cool and soft in the ex- 
treme. In a bland, almost tender voice, he said to the 
unfortunate driver, '' My friend, perhaps I can help you ;'* 
and his gentle way of disentangling and patting the leaders 
as he headed them round in the right direction would have 
given him a high office under Mr. Bergh. He leisurely ex- 
amined the embedded wheel, and cast an eye along the 
road ahead. He then began in rather excited manner to 
swear, pouring it out louder and more profane, till he 
utterly eclipsed the most horrid blasphemies I ever heard, 



Cut-off Copples's 359 

piling them up thicker and more fiendish till it seemed as 
if the very earth must open and engulf him. 

I noticed one mule after another give a little squat, bring- 
ing their breasts hard against the collars, and straining 
traces, till only one old mule, with ears back and dangling 
chain, still held out. The Pike walked up and yelled one 
gigantic oath; her ears sprang forward, she squatted in 
terror, and the iron links grated under her strain. He then 
stepped back and took the rein, every trembling mule look- 
ing out of the corner of its eye and listening at qui vive. 

With a peculiar air of deliberation and of childlike sim- 
plicity, he said in every-day tones, " Come up there, mules ! " 

One quick strain, a slight rumble, and the wagon rolled 
on to Copples's. 

Smith and I followed, and as we neared the house he 
punched me familiarly and said, as a brown petticoat dis- 
appeared in the station door, " There's Sarah Jane ! When 
I see that girl I feel like I'd reach out and gather her in;" 
then clasping her imaginary form as if she was about to 
dance with him, he executed a couple of waltz turns, softly 
intimating, " That's what's the matter with H. G." 

Kaweah being stabled, we betook ourselves to the office, 
which was of course bar-room as well. As I entered, the 
unfortunate teamster was about paying his liquid compli- 
ment to the florid Pike. Their glasses were filled. " My 
respects,'' said the little driver. The whiskey became lost 
to view, and went eroding its way through the dust these 
poor fellows had swallowed. He added, *' Well, Billy, you 
can swear." 

'' Swear ? " repeated the Pike in a tone of incredulous 
questioning. ''Me swear?" as if the compliment were 
greater than his modest desert. '' No, I can't blaspheme 
worth a cuss. You'd jest orter hear Pete Green. He can 
exhort the impenitent mule. I've known a ten-mule-team 



360 American Essays 

to renounce the flesh and haul thirty-one thousand through 
a foot of clay mud under one of his outpourings." 

As a hotel, Copples's is on the Mongolian plan, which 
means that dining-room and kitchen are given over to the 
mercies — never very tender — of Chinamen ; not such China- 
men as learned the art of pig-roasting that they might 
be served up by Elia, but the average John, and a sadly 
low average that John is. I grant him a certain general 
air of thrift, admitting, too, that his lack of sobriety never 
makes itself apparent in loud Celtic brawl. But he is, when 
all is said, and in spite of timid and fawning obedience, a 
very poor servant. 

Now and then at one friend's house it has happened to 
me that I dined upon artistic Chinese cookery, and all they 
who come home from living in China smack their lips over 
the relishing cuisine. I wish they had sat down that day 
at Copples's. No; on second thought I would spare 
them. 

John may go peacefully to North Adams and make shoes 
for us, but I shall not solve the awful domestic problem 
by bringing him into my kitchen ; certainly so long as How- 
ells's " Mrs. Johnson " lives, nor even while I can get an 
Irish lady to torment me, and offer the hospitality of my 
home to her cousins. 

After the warning bell, fifty or sixty teamsters inserted 
their dusty heads in buckets of water, turned their once 
white neck-handkerchiefs inside out, producing a sudden 
effect of clean linen, and made use of the two mournful 
wrecks of combs which hung on strings at either side the 
Copples's mirror. Many went to the bar and partook of 
a " dust-cutter." There was then such clearing of throats, 
and such loud and prolonged blowing of noses as may 
not often be heard upon this globe. 

In the calm which ensued, conversation sprang up on 



Cut-off Copples's 361 

" lead harness," the " Stockton wagon that had went off 
the grade," with here and there a sentiment called out by 
two framed lithographic belles, who in great richness of 
color and scantiness of raiment flanked the bar-mirror; — a 
dazzling reflector, chiefly destined to portray the bar- 
keeper's back hair, which work of art involved much af- 
fectionate labor. 

A second bell and rolling away of doors revealed a long 
dining-room, with three parallel tables, cleanly set and 
watched over by Chinamen, whose fresh, white clothes 
and bright, olive-buff skin made a contrast of color which 
was always chief among my yearnings for the Nile. 

While I loitered in the background every seat was taken, 
and I found myself with a few dilatory teamsters destined 
to await a second table. 

The dinner-room communicated with a kitchen beyond 
by means of two square apertures cut in the partition wall. 
Through these portholes a glare of red light poured, except 
when the square framed a Chinese cook's head, or dis- 
charged hundreds of little dishes. 

The teamsters sat down in patience; a few of the more 
elegant sort cleaned their nails with the three-tine forks, 
others picked their teeth with them, and nearly all speared 
with this implement small specimens from the dishes before 
them, securing a pickle or a square inch of pie or even 
that luxury, a dried apple; a few, on tilted-back chairs, 
drummed upon the bottom of their plates the latest tune of 
the road. 

When fairly under way the scene became active and 
animated beyond belief. Waiters, balancing upon their 
arms twenty or thirty plates, hurried along and shot them 
dexterously over the teamsters' heads with crash and 
spatter. 

Beans swimming in fat, meats slimed with pale, ropy 



362 American Essays 

gravy, and over everything a faint Mongol odor, — the 
flavor of moral degeneracy and of a disintegrating race. 

Sharks and wolves may no longer be figured as types of 
prandial haste. My friends, the teamsters, stuffed and 
swallov^ed v^ith a rapidity which was alarming but for 
the dexterity they showed, and which could only have 
come of long practice. 

In fifteen minutes the room was empty, and those fel- 
lows who were not feeding grain to their mules lighted 
cigars and lingered round the bar. 

Just then my artist rushed in, seized me by the arm, 
and said in my ear, " We'll have our supper over to Mrs. 
Copples's. O no, I guess not — Sarah Jane — arms peeled 
— cooking up stuff — old woman gone into the milk-room 
with a skimmer.'' He then added that if I wanted to see 
what I had been spared, I might follow him. 

We went round an angle of the building and came upon 
a high bank, where, through wide-open windows, I could 
look into the Chinese kitchen. 

By this time the second table of teamsters were under 
way, and the waiters yelled their orders through to the 
three cooks. 

This large, unpainted kitchen was lighted up by kero- 
sene lamps. Through clouds of smoke and steam dodged 
and sprang the cooks, dripping with perspiration and grease, 
grabbing a steak in the hand and slapping it down on the 
gridiron, slipping and sliding around on the damp floor, 
dropping a card of biscuits and picking them up again in 
their fists, which were garnished by the whole bill of fare. 
The red papers with Chinese inscriptions, and little joss- 
sticks here and there pasted upon each wall, the spry devils 
themselves, and that faint, sickening odor of China which 
pervaded the room, combined to produce a sense of deep, 
sober gratitude that I had not risked their fare. 



Cut-off Copples's 363 

" Now," demanded Smith, " you see that there little 
white building yonder ? " 

I did. 

He struck a contemplative position, leaned against the 
house, extending one hand after the manner of the minstrel 
sentimentalist, and softly chanted : 

" ' 'Tis, O, 'tis the cottage of me love ;' 

'' and there's where they're getting up as nice a little sup- 
per as can be found on this road or any other. Let's go 
over!" 

So we strolled across an open space where were two giant 
pines towering somber against the twilight, a little mountain 
brooklet, and a few quiet cows. 

'' Stop," said Smith, leaning his back against a pine, 
and encircling my neck affectionately with an arm ; " I 
told you, as regards Sarah Jane, how my feelings stand. 
Well, now, you just bet she's on the reciprocate ! When I 
told old woman Copples I'd like to invite you over, — Sarah 
Jane she passed me in the doorway, — and said she, ' Glad 
to see your friends.' " 

Then sotto voce, for we were very near, he sang again: 

" ' 'Tis, O, 'tis the cottage of me love ;' 

" and C. K.," he continued familiarly, " you're a judge of 
wimmen," chucking his knuckles into my ribs, whereat 
I jumped; when he added, " There, I knew you was. Well, 
Sarah Jane is a derned magnificent female; number three 
boot, just the height for me. Venus de Copples, I call her, 
and would make the most touching artist's wife in this 
planet. If I design to paint a head, or a foot, or an arm, 
get my little old Sarah Jane to peel the particular charm, 
and just whack her in on the canvas." 



364 American Essays 

We passed in through low doors, turned from a small, 
dark entry into the family sitting-room, and were alone 
there in presence of a cheery log fire, which good-naturedly 
bade us welcome, crackling freely and tossing its sparks 
out upon floor of pine and coyote-skin rug. A few old 
framed prints hung upon dark walls, their faces looking 
serenely down upon the scanty, old-fashioned furniture and 
windows full of flowering plants. A low-cushioned chair, 
not long since vacated, was drawn close by the centre-table, 
whereon were a lamp and a large, open Bible, with a pair 
of silver-bowed spectacles lying upon its lighted page. 

Smith made a gesture of silence toward the door, touched 
the Bible, and whispered, " Here's where old woman Cop- 
pies Hves, and it is a good thing; I read it aloud to her 
evenings, and I can just feel the high, local lights of it. 
It'll fetch H. G. yet ! " 

At this juncture the door opened; a pale, thin, elderly 
woman entered, and with tired smile greeted me. While 
her hard, labor-stiffened, needle-roughened hand was in 
mine, I looked into her face and felt something (it may 
be, it must be, but little, yet something) of the sorrow 
of her life ; that of a woman large in sympathy, deep in 
faith, eternal in constancy, thrown away on a rough, worth- 
less fellow. All things she hoped for had failed her; the 
tenderness which never came, the hopes years ago in ashes, 
the whole world of her yearnings long buried, leaving only 
the duty of living and the hope of Heaven. As she sat 
down, took up her spectacles and knitting, and closed the 
Bible, she began pleasantly to talk to us of the warm, bright 
autumn nights, of Smith's work, and then of my own pro- 
fession, and of her niece, Sarah Jane. Her genuinely sweet 
spirit and natively gentle manner were very beautiful, and 
far overbalanced all traces of rustic birth and mountain 
life. 



Cut-off Copples's 365 

O, that unquenchable Christian fire, how pure the gold 
of its result! It needs no practiced elegance, no social 
greatness, for its success; only the warm human heart, 
and out of it shall come a sacred calm and gentleness, such 
as no power, no wealth, no culture may ever hope to win. 

No words of mine would outline the beauty of that plain, 
weary old woman, the sad, sweet patience of those gray 
eyes, nor the spirit of overflowing goodness which cheered 
and enlivened the half hour we spent there. 

H. G. might perhaps be pardoned for showing an alacrity 
when the door again opened and Sarah Jane rolled — I might 
almost say trundled — in, and was introduced to me. 

Sarah Jane was an essentially Californian product, as 
much so as one of those vast potatoes or massive pears; 
she had a suggestion of State-Fair in the fullness of her 
physique, yet withal was pretty and modest. 

If I could have rid myself of a fear that her buttons 
might sooner or later burst off and go singing by my ear, 
I think I might have felt as H. G. did, that she was a " mag- 
nificent female," with her smooth, brilliant skin and ropes 
of soft brown hair. 

H. G., in presence of the ladies, lost something of his 
original flavor, and rose into studied elegance, greatly to 
the comfort of Sarah, whose glow of pride as his talk ran on 
came without show of restraint. 

The supper was delicious. 

But Sarah was quiet, quiet to H. G. and to me, until 
after tea, when the old lady said, '' You young folks will 
have to excuse me this evening," and withdrew to her 
chamber. 

More logs were then piled on the sitting-room hearth, 
and we three gathered in a semi-circle. 

Presently H. G. took the poker and twisted it about 
among coals and ashes, prying up the oak sticks, as he 



366 American Essays 

announced, in a measured, studied way, '' An artist's wife, 
that is/' he explained, '' an Academician's wife orter, well 
she'd orter sahe the beautiful, and take her regular aes- 
thetics ; and then again," he continued in explanatory tone, 
" she'd orter to know how to keep a hotel, derned if she 
hadn't, for it's rough like furst off, 'fore a feller gets his 
name up. But then when he does, tho', she's got a salubrious 
old time of it. It's touch a little bell " (he pressed the 
andiron-top to show us how the thing was done), "and 
' Brooks, the morning paper ! ' Open your regular Herald : 

" ' Art Notes. — Another of H. G. Smith's tender works, 
entitled, " Off the Grade," so full of out-of-doors and subtle 
feeling of nature, is now on exhibition at Goupil's.' 

'' Look down a little further : 

" ' Italian Opera. — Between the acts all eyes turned 
to the distingue Mrs. H. G. Smith, who looked,' " — then 
turning to me, and waving his hand at Sarah Jane, '' I 
leave it to you if she don't." 

Sarah Jane assumed the pleasing color of the sugar-beet, 
without seeming inwardly unhappy. 

'' It's only a question of time with H. G.," continued 
my friend. " Art is long, you know — derned long — and it 
may be a year before I paint my great picture, but after 
that Smith works in lead harness." 

He used the poker freely, and more and more his flow 
of hopes turned a shade of sentiment to Sarah Jane, who 
smiled broader and broader, showing teeth of healthy 
whiteness. 

At last I withdrew and sought my room, which was 
H. G.'s also, and his studio. I had gone with a candle round 
the walls whereon were tacked studies and sketches, finding 
here and there a bit of real merit among the profusion of 
trash, when the door burst open and my friend entered. 



Cut-off Copples's 367 

kicked off his boots and trousers, and walked up and down 
at a sort of quadrille step, singing : 

" ' Yes, it's the cottage of me love ; 
You bet, it's the cottage of me love,' 

" and, what's more, H. G. has just had his genteel good- 
night kiss ; and when and where is the good old bar-keep ? " 

I checked his exuberance as best I might, knowing full 
well that the quiet and elegant dispenser of neat and mixed 
beverages hearing this inquiry would put in an appearance 
in person and offer a few remarks designed to provoke ill- 
feeling. So I at last got Smith in bed and the lamp out. 
All was quiet for a few moments, and when I had almost 
gotten asleep I heard my room-mate in low tones say to 
himself, — • 

" Married, by the Rev. Gospel, our talented California 
artist, Mr. H. G. Smith, to Miss Sarah Jane Copples. No 
cards." 

A pause, and then with more gentle utterance, *' and 
that's what's the matter with H. G." 

Slowly from this atmosphere of art I passed away into 
the tranquil land of dreams. 



[From Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada, by Clarence King. 

Copyright, 1871, by James R. Osgood & Co. Copyright, 

1902, by Charles Scribner's Sons.] 



THE THEATRE FRANCAIS 

Henry James 

M. Francisque Sarcey, the dramatic critic of the Paris 
"' Temps,'' and the gentleman who, of the whole journalistic 
fraternity, holds the fortune of a play in the hollow of his 
hand, has been publishing during the last year a series of 
biographical notices of the chief actors and actresses of the 
first theater in the world. Comediens et Comediennes: 
la Comedie Francaise — such is the title of this publica- 
tion, which appears in monthly numbers of the " Librairie 
des Bibliophiles," and is ornamented on each occasion with 
a very prettily etched portrait, by M. Gaucherel, of the artist 
to whom the number is devoted. By lovers of the stage in 
general and of the Theatre Fran^ais in particular the series 
will be found most interesting; and I welcome the pretext 
for saying a few words about an institution which — if such 
language be not hyperbolical- — I passionately admire. I 
must add that the portrait is incomplete, though for the 
present occasion it is more than sufficient. The list of M. 
Sarcey's biographies is not yet filled up ; three or four, those 
of Madame Favart and of MM. Febvre and Delaunay, are 
still wanting. Nine numbers, however, have appeared — the 
first being entitled La Maison de Moliere, and devoted 
to a general account of the great theater ; and the others 
treating of its principal societaires and pensionnaires in the 
following order : 

368 



The Theatre Fran^ais 369 

Regnier, 

Got, 

Sophie Croizette, 

Sarah Bernhardt, 

Coquelin, 

Madeleine Brohan, 

Bressant, 

Madame Plessy. 

(This order, by the way, is purely accidental; it is not 
that of age or of merit.) It is always entertaining to 
encounter M. Francisque Sarcey, and the reader who, dur- 
ing a Paris winter, has been in the habit, of a Sunday 
evening, of unfolding his " Temps " immediately after un- 
folding his napkin, and glancing down first of all to see what 
this sturdy feuilletonist e has found to his hand — such a 
reader will find him in great force in the pages before us. 
It is true that, though I myself confess to being such a 
reader, there are moments when I grow rather weary of 
M. Sarcey, who has in an eminent degree both the virtues 
and the defects which attach to the great French charac- 
teristic — the habit of taking terribly mi scrieiix anything 
that you may set about doing. Of this habit of abounding 
in one's own sense, of expatiating, elaborating, reiterating, 
refining, as if for the hour the fate of mankind were bound 
Vip with one's particular topic, M. Sarcey is a capital and 
at times an almost comical representative. He talks about 
the theater once a week as if — honestly, between himself 
and his reader — the theater were the only thing in this 
frivolous world that is worth seriously talking about. He 
has a religious respect for his theme and he holds that if 
a thing is to be done at all it must be done in detail as well 
as in the gross. 

It is to this serious way of taking the matter, to his thor- 



^yo American Essays 

oughly businesslike and professional attitude, to his un- 
wearying attention to detail, that the critic of the " Temps "' 
owes his enviable influence and the weight of his words. 
Add to this that he is sternly incorruptible. He has his 
admirations, but they are honest and discriminating; and 
whom he loveth he very often chasteneth. He is not 
ashamed to commend Mile. X., who has only had a curtsy 
to make, if her curtsy has been the ideal curtsy of the situa- 
tion; and he is not afraid to overhaul M. A,, who has 
delivered the tirade of the play, if M. A., has failed to hit 
the mark. Of course his judgment is good ; when I have had 
occasion to measure it I have usually found it excellent. He 
has the scenic sense — the theatrical eye. He knows at a 
glance what will do, and what will not do. He is shrewd 
and sagacious and almost tiresomely in earnest, and this is 
his principal brilliancy. He is homely, familiar and col- 
loquial ; he leans his elbows on his desk and does up his 
weekly budget into a parcel the reverse of coquettish. You 
can fancy him a grocer retailing tapioca and hominy — full 
weight for the price ; his style seems a sort of integument of 
brown paper. But the fact remains that if M. Sarcey praises 
a play the play has a run; and that if M. Sarcey says it will 
not do it does not do at all. If M. Sarcey devotes an 
encouraging line and a half to a young actress, mademoi- 
selle is immediately lancee ; she has a career. If he bestows 
a quiet '' bravo " on an obscure comedian, the gentleman 
may forthwith renew his engagement. When you make 
and unmake fortunes at this rate, what matters it whether 
you have a little elegance the more or the less? Elegance 
is for M. Paul de St. Victor, who does the theaters in the 
'* Moniteur," and who, though he writes a style only a trifle 
less pictorial than that of Theophile Gautier himself, has 
never, to the best of my belief, brought clouds or sunshine 
to any playhouse. I may add, to finish with M. Sarcey, 



The Theatre Francais 371 

that he contributes a daily political article — generally de- 
voted to watching and showing up the " game " of the 
clerical party — to Edmond About's journal, the '' XIX^^"^^ 
Siecle"; that he. gives a weekly conference on current lit- 
erature ; that he " confers '* also on those excellent Sunday 
morning performances now so common in the French thea- 
ters, during which examples of the classic reportory are 
presented, accompanied by a light lecture upon the history 
and character of the play. As the commentator on these 
occasions M. Sarcey is in great demand, and he officiates 
.sometimes in small provincial towns. Lastly, frequent play- 
goers in Paris observe that the very slenderest novelty is 
sufficient to insure at a theater the (very considerable) 
physical presence of the conscientious critic of the " Temps.'' 
If he were remarkable for nothing else he would be remark- 
able for the fortitude with which he exposes himself to the 
pestiferous climate of the Parisian temples of the drama. 

For these agreeable " notices " M. Sarcey appears to have 
mended his pen and to have given a fillip to his fancy. They 
are gracefully and often lightly turned; occasionally, even, 
the author grazes the epigrammatic. They deal, as is proper, 
with the artistic and not with the private physiognomy of 
the ladies and gentlemen whom they commemorate ; and 
though they occasionally allude to what the French call 
" intimate " matters, they contain no satisfaction for the 
lovers of scandal. The Theatre Francais, in the face it 
presents to the world, is an austere and venerable establish- 
ment, and a frivolous tone about its affairs would be almost 
as much out of keeping as if applied to the Academic her- 
self. M. Sarcey touches upon the organization of the 
theater, and gives some account of the different phases 
through which it has passed during these latter years. Its 
chief functionary is a general administrator, or director, 
appointed by the State, which enjoys this right in virtue 



372 American Essays 

of the considerable subsidy which it pays to the house; 
a subsidy amounting, if I am not mistaken (M. Sarcey does 
not mention the sum), to 250,000 francs. The director, 
however, is not an absolute but a constitutional ruler; for 
he shares his powers with the society itself, which has 
always had a large deliberative voice. 

Whence, it may be asked, does the society derive its light 
and its inspiration? From the past, from precedent, from 
tradition — from the great unwritten body of laws which 
no one has in his keeping but many have in their memory, 
and all in their respect. The principles on which the 
Theatre Franqais rests are a good deal like the Common 
Law of England — a vaguely and inconveniently registered 
mass of regulations which time and occasion have welded 
together and from which the recurring occasion can usually 
manage to extract the rightful precedent. Napoleon I., 
who had a finger in every pie in his dominion, found time 
during his brief and disastrous occupation of Moscow to 
send down a decree remodeling and regulating the consti- 
tution of the theater. This document has long been a dead 
letter, and the society abides by its older traditions. The 
traditions of the Comedie Frangaise — that is the sovereign 
word, and that is the charm of the place — the charm that 
one never ceases to feel, however often one may sit be- 
neath the classic, dusky dome. One feels this charm with 
peculiar intensity as a newly arrived foreigner. The 
Theatre Frangais has had the good fortune to be able to 
allow its traditions to accumulate. They have been pre- 
served, transmitted, respected, cherished, until at last they 
form the very atmosphere, the vital air, of the establish- 
ment. A stranger feels their superior influence the first 
time he sees the great curtain go up; he feels that he is in 
a theater that is not as other theaters are. It is not only 
better, it is different. It has a peculiar perfection — some- 



The Theatre FRANgAis 373 

thing consecrated, historical, academic. This impression is 
delicious, and he watches the performance in a sort of tran- 
quil ecstasy. 

Never has he seen anything so smooth and harmonious, 
so artistic and complete. He has heard all his life of atten- 
tion to detail, and now, for the first time, he sees some- 
thing that deserves the name. He sees dramatic effort 
refined to a point with which the English stage is unac- 
quainted. He sees that there are no limits to possible 
" finish," and that so trivial an act as taking a letter from 
a servant or placing one's hat on a chair may be made a 
suggestive and interesting incident. He sees these things 
and a great many more besides, but at first he does not 
analyze them; he gives himself up to sympathetic contem- 
plation. He is in an ideal and exemplary world — a world 
that has managed to. attain all the felicities that the world 
we live in misses. The people do the things that we should 
like to do ; they are gifted as we should like to be ; they have 
mastered the accomplishments that we have had to give up. 
The women are not all beautiful — decidedly not, indeed — 
but they are graceful, agreeable, sympathetic, ladylike ; they 
have the best manners possible and they are delightfully 
well dressed. They have charming musical voices and they 
speak with irreproachable purity and sweetness; they walk 
with the most elegant grace and when they sit it is a pleas- 
ure to see their attitudes. They go out and come in, they 
pass across the stage, they talk, and laugh, and cry, they 
deliver long tirades or remain statuesquely mute; they are 
tender or tragic, they are comic or conventional ; and through 
it all you never observe an awkwardness, a roughness, an 
accident, a crude spot, a false note. 

As for the men, they are not handsome either; it must 
be confessed, indeed, that at the present hour manly beauty 
is but scantily represented at the Theatre Frangais. Bres- 



374 American Essays 

sant, I believe, used to be thought handsome ; but Bressant 
has retired, and among the gentlemen of the troupe I can 
think of no one but M. Mounet-Sully who may be posi- 
tively commended for his fine person. But M. Mounet- 
Sully is, from the scenic point of view, an Adonis of the 
first magnitude. To be handsome, however, is for an actor 
one of the last necessities; and these gentlemen are mostly 
handsome enough. They look perfectly what they are in- 
tended to look, and in cases where it is proposed that they 
. shall seem handsome, they usually succeed. They are as 
well mannered and as well dressed as their fairer comrades 
and their voices are no less agreeable and effective. They 
represent gentlemen and they produce the illusion. In this 
endeavour they deserve even greater credit than the ac- 
tresses, for in modern comedy, of which the repertory of the 
Theatre Frangais is largely composed, they have nothing 
in the way of costume to help to carry it off. Half-a-dozen 
ugly men, in the periodic coat and trousers and stove-pipe 
hat, with blue chins and false mustaches, strutting before 
the footlights, and pretending to be interesting, romantic, 
pathetic, heroic, certainly play a perilous game. At every 
turn they suggest prosaic things and the usual liability to 
awkwardness is meantime increased a thousandfold. But 
the comedians of the Theatre Frangais are never awkward, 
and when it is necessary they solve triumphantly the prob- 
lem of being at once realistic to the eye and romantic to 
the imagination. 

I am speaking always of one's first impression of them. 
There are spots on the sun, and you discover after a while 
that there are little irregularities at the Theatre Fran9ais. 
But the acting is so incomparably better than any that 
you have seen that criticism for a long time is content 
to lie dormant. I shall never forget how at first I was 
under the charm. I liked the very incommodities of the 



The Theatre Fran(;ais 375 

place; I am not sure that I did not find a certain mystic 
salubrity in the bad ventilation. The Theatre Frangais, 
it is known, gives you a good deal for your money. The 
performance, which rarely ends before midnight, and some- 
times transgresses it, frequently begins by seven o'clock. 
The first hour or two is occupied by secondary performers ; 
but not for the world at this time would I have missed the 
first rising of the curtain. No dinner could be too hastily 
swallowed to enable me to see, for instance, Madame 
Nathalie in Octave Feuillet's charming little comedy of 
'' Le Village." Madame Nathalie was a plain, stout old 
woman, who did the mothers and aunts and elderly wives ; 
I use the past tense because she retired from the stage 
a year ago, leaving a most conspicuous vacancy. She was 
an admirable actress and a perfect mistress of laughter and 
tears. In " Le Village " she played an old provincial 
bourgeoise whose husband takes it into his head, one winter 
night, to start on the tour of Europe with a roving bachelor 
friend, who has dropped down on him at supper-time, after 
the lapse of years, and has gossiped him into momentary 
discontent with his fireside existence. My pleasure was in 
Madame Nathalie's figure when she came in dressed to go 
out to vespers across the place. The two foolish old cronies 
are over their wine, talking of the beauty of the women on 
the Ionian coast; you hear the church-bell in the distance. 
It was the quiet felicity of the old lady's dress that used 
to charm me; the Comedie Frangaise was in every fold 
of it. She wore a large black silk mantilla, of a peculiar 
cut, which looked as if she had just taken it tenderly out 
of some old wardrobe where it lay folded in lavender, and 
a large dark bonnet, adorned with handsome black silk 
loops and bows. Her big pale face had a softly frightened 
look, and in her hand she carried her neatly kept breviary. 
The extreme suggestiveness, and yet the taste and temper- 



376 American Essays 

ance of this costume, seemed to me inimitable ; the bonnet 
alone, with its handsome, decent, virtuous bows, was worth 
coming to see. It expressed all the rest, and you saw the 
excellent, pious woman go pick her steps churchward among 
the puddles, while Jeannette, the cook, in a high white cap, 
marched before her in sabots with a lantern. 

Such matters are trifles, but they are representative trifles, 
and they are not the only ones that I remember. It used 
to please me, when I had squeezed into my stall — the stalls 
at the Fran<;ais are extremely uncomfortable — to remem- 
ber of how great a history the large, dim salle around me 
could boast; how many great things had happened there; 
how the air was thick with associations. Even if I had 
never seen Rachel, it was something of a consolation to think 
that those very footlights had illumined her finest moments 
and that the echoes of her mighty voice were sleeping 
in that dingy dome. From this to musing upon the " tradi- 
tions '' of the place, of which I spoke just now, was of course 
but a step. How were they kept? by whom, and where? 
Who trims the undying lamp and guards the accumulated 
treasure? I never found out — by sitting in the stalls; and 
very soon I ceased to care to know. One may be very fond 
of the stage and yet care little for the green-room; just as 
one may be very fond of pictures and books and yet be no 
frequenter of studios and authors' dens. They might pass 
on the torch as they would behind the scenes ; so long as 
during my time they did not let it drop I made up my mind 
to be satisfied. And that one could depend upon their not 
letting it drop became a part of the customary comfort of 
Parisian life. It became certain that the " traditions '' were 
not mere catchwords, but a most beneficent reality. 

Going to the other Parisian theaters helps you to believe 
in them. Unless you are a voracious theater-goer you give 
the others up ; you find they do not *' pay " ; the Frangais 



The Theatre Francais 377 

does for you all that they do and so much more besides. 
There are two possible exceptions — the Gymnase and the 
Palais Royal. The Gymnase, since the death of Mademoi- 
selle Desclee, has been under a heavy cloud; but occasion- 
ally, when a month's sunshine rests upon it, there is a 
savor of excellence in the performance. But you feel that 
you are still within the realm of accident; the delightful 
security of the Rue de Richelieu is wanting. The young 
lover is liable to be common and the beautifully dressed 
heroine to have an unpleasant voice. The Palais Royal 
has always been in its way very perfect ; but its way admits 
of great imperfection. The actresses are classically bad, 
though usually pretty, and the actors are much addicted to 
taking liberties. In broad comedy, nevertheless, two or three 
of the latter are not to be surpassed, and (counting out the 
women) there is usually something masterly in a Palais 
Royal performance. In its own line it has what is called 
style, and it therefore walks, at a distance, in the footsteps 
of the Frangais. The Odeon has never seemed to me in 
any degree a rival of the Theatre Franqais, though it is a 
smaller copy of that establishment. It receives a subsidy 
from the State, and is obliged by its contract to play the 
classic repertory one night in the week. It is on these 
nights, listening to Moliere or Marivaux, that you may best 
measure the superiority of the greater theater. I have seen 
actors at the Odeon, in the classic repertory, imperfect in 
their texts ; a monstrously insupposable case at the Comedie 
Francaise. The function of the Odeon is to operate as a 
pepiniere or nursery for its elder — to try young talents, 
shape them, make them flexible and then hand them over 
to the upper house. The more especial nursery of the 
Frangais, however, is the Conservatoire Dramatique, an in- 
stitution dependent upon the State, through the Ministry of 
the Fine Arts, whose budget is charged with the remunera- 



^"/S American Essays 

tion of its professors. Pupils graduating from the Con- 
servatoire with a prize have ipso facto the right to debuter 
at the Theatre Francais, which retains them or lets them 
go, according to its discretion. Most of the first subjects 
of the Frangais have done their two years' work at the 
Conservatoire, and M. Sarcey holds that an actor who has 
not had that fundamental training which is only to be 
acquired there never obtains a complete mastery of his 
resources. Nevertheless some of the best actors of the 
day have owed nothing to the Conservatoire — Bressant, for 
instance, and Aimee Desclee, the latter of whom, indeed, 
never arrived at the Frangais. (Moliere and Balzac were 
not of the Academy, and so Mile. Desclee, the first actress 
after Rachel, died without acquiring the privilege which 
M. Sarcey says is the day-dream of all young theatrical 
women — that of printing on their visiting-cards, after their 
name, de la Comedie Francaise.) 

The Theatre Frangais has, moreover, the right to do as 
Moliere did — to claim its property wherever it finds it. It 
may stretch out its long arm and break the engagement of 
a promising actor at any of the other theaters ; of course 
after a certain amount of notice given. So, last winter, 
it notified to the Gymnase its design of appropriating 
Worms, the admirable jeune premier, who, returning from 
a long sojourn in Russia and taking the town by surprise, 
had begun to retrieve the shrunken fortunes of that estab- 
lishment. 

On the whole, it may be said that the great talents find 
their way, sooner or later, to the Theatre Frangais. This 
is of course not a rule that works unvaryingly, for there 
are a great many influences to interfere with it. Interest 
as well as merit — especially in the case of the actresses — 
weighs in the scale ; and the ire that may exist in celestial 
minds has been known to manifest itself in the councils of 



The Theatre Francais 379 

the Comedie. Moreover, a brilliant actress may prefer to 
reign supreme at one of the smaller theaters ; at the Fran- 
cais, inevitably, she shares her dominion. The honor is less, 
but the comfort is greater. 

Nevertheless, at the Frangais, in a general way, there is 
in each case a tolerably obvious artistic reason for member- 
ship ; and if you see a clever actor remain outside for years, 
you may be pretty sure that, though private reasons count, 
there are artistic reasons as well. The first half dozen 
times I saw Mademoiselle Fargueil, who for years ruled 
the roost, as the vulgar saying is, at the Vaudeville, I won- 
dered that so consummate and accomplished an actress 
should 'not have a place on the first French stage. But I 
presently grew wiser, and perceived that, clever as 
Mademoiselle Fargueil is, she is not for the Rue de 
Richelieu, but for the Boulevards ; her peculiar, intensely 
Parisian intonation would sound out of place in the Maison 
de Moliere. (Of course if Mademoiselle Fargueil has ever 
received overtures from the Frangais, my sagacity is at 
fault — I am looking through a millstone. But I suspect 
she has not.) Frederic Lemaitre, who died last winter, 
and who was a very great actor, had been tried at the 
Frangais and found wanting — for those particular condi- 
tions. But it may probably be said that if Frederic was 
wanting, the theater was too, in this case. Frederic's great 
force was his extravagance, his fantasticality ; and the stage 
of the Rue de Richelieu was a trifle too academic. I have 
even wondered whether Desclee, if she had lived, would 
have trod that stage by right, and whether it would have 
seemed her proper element. The negative is not impossible. 
It is very possible that in that classic atmosphere her great 
charm — her intensely modern quality, her super-subtle 
realism — would have appeared an anomaly. I can imagine 
even that her strange, touching, nervous voice would not 



380 American Essays 

have seemed the voice of the house. At the Frangais you 
must know how to acquit yourself of a tirade; that has 
always been the touchstone of capacity. It would probably 
have proved Desclee's stumbling-block, though she could 
utter speeches of six words as no one else surely has ever 
done. It is true that Mademoiselle Croizette, and in a cer- 
tain sense Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt, are rather weak 
at their tirades; but then old theater-goers will tell you that 
these young ladies, in spite of a hundred attractions, have 
no business at the Frangais. 

In the course of time the susceptible foreigner passes 
from that superstitious state of attention which I just now 
sketched to that greater enlightenment which enables him 
to understand such a judgment as this of the old theater- 
goers. It is borne in upon him that, as the good Homer 
sometimes nods, the Theatre Frangais sometimes lapses 
from its high standard. He makes various reflections. He 
thinks that Mademoiselle Favart rants. He thinks M. 
Mounet-Sully, in spite of his delicious voice, insupportable. 
He thinks that M. Parodi's five-act tragedy, " Rome 
Vaincue," presented in the early part of the present winter, 
was better done certainly than it would have been done 
upon any English stage, but by no means so much better 
done as might have been expected. (Here, if I had space, 
I would open a long parenthesis, in which I should aspire 
to demonstrate that the incontestable superiority of average 
French acting to English is by no means so strongly marked 
in tragedy as in comedy — is indeed sometimes not strongly 
marked at all. The reason of this is in a great measure, 
I think, that we have had Shakespeare to exercise ourselves 
upon, and that an inferior dramatic instinct exercised upon 
Shakespeare may become more flexible than a superior 
one exercised upon Corneille and Racine. When it comes 
to ranting — ranting even in a modified and comparatively 



The Theatre Francais 381 

reasonable sense — we do, I suspect, quite as well as the 
French, if not rather better.) Mr. G. H. Lewes, in his 
entertaining little book upon Actors and the Art of Acting, 
mentions M. Talbot, of the Frangais, as a surprisingly in- 
competent performer. My memory assents to his judgment 
at the same time that it proposes an amendment. This 
actor's special line is the bufifeted, bemuddled, besotted old 
fathers, uncles and guardians of classic comedy, and he 
plays, them with his face much more than with his tongue. 
Nature has endowed him with a visage so admirably 
adapted, once for all, to his role, that he has only to sit 
in a chair, with his hands folded on his stomach, to look 
like a monument of bewildered senility. After that it does 
not matter what he says or how he says it. 

The Comedie Frangaise sometimes does weaker things 
than in keeping M. Talbot. Last autumn,* for instance, it 
was really depressing to see Mademoiselle Dudley brought 
all the way from Brussels (and with not a little flourish 
either) to '' create " the guilty vestal in '' Rome Vaincue." 
As far as the interests of art are concerned. Mademoiselle 
Dudley had much better have remained in the Flemish 
capital, of whose language she is apparently a perfect mis- 
tress. It is hard, too, to forgive M. Perrin (M. Perrin 
is the present director of the Theatre Frangais) for bring- 
ing out '' L'Ami Fritz " of M. Erckmann-Chatrian. The 
two gentlemen who write under this name have a double 
claim to kindness. In the first place, they have produced 
some delightful little novels ; everyone knows and admires 
Le Conscrit de 181^; everyone admires, indeed, the charm- 
ing tale on which the play in question is founded. In the 
second place, they were, before the production of their 
piece, the objects of a scurrilous attack by the " Figaro " 
newspaper, which held the authors up to reprobation for 

* 1876. 



3B2 American Essays 

having " insulted the army/' and did its best to lay the 
train for a hostile manifestation on the first night. (It may 
be added that the good sense of the public outbalanced the 
impudence of the newspaper, and the play was simply ad- 
vertised into success.) But neither the novels nor the 
persecutions of M. Erckmann-Chatrian avail to render 
'' L'Ami Fritz," in its would-be dramatic form, worthy of 
the first French stage. It is played as well as possible, and 
upholstered even better; but it is, according to the vulgar 
phrase, too *' thin " for the locality. Upholstery has never 
played such a part at the Theatre Frangais as during the 
reign of M. Perrin, who came into power, if I mistake not, 
after the late war. He proved very early that he was a 
radical, and he has introduced a hundred novelties. His 
administration, however, has been brilliant, and in his hands 
the Theatre Frangais has made money. This it had rarely 
done before, and this, in the conservative view, is quite 
beneath its dignity. To the conservative view I should 
humbly incline. An institution so closely protected by a 
rich and powerful State ought to be able to cultivate art 
for art. 

The first of M. Sarcey's biographies, to which I have 
been too long in coming, is devoted to Regnier, a veteran 
actor, who left the stage four or five years since, and who 
now fills the ofiice of oracle to his younger comrades. It 
is the indispensable thing, says M. Sarcey, for a young 
aspirant to be able to say that he has had lessons of M. 
Regnier, or that M. Regnier had advised him, or that he 
has talked such and such a point over with M. Regnier. 
(His comrades always speak of him as M. Regnier — never 
as simple Regnier.) I have had the fortune to see him 
but once; it was the first time I ever went to the Theatre 
Frangais. He played Don Annibal in Emile Augier's ro- 
mantic comedy of '' L'Aventuriere," and I have not for- 



The Theatre Francais 383 

gotten the exquisite humor of the performance. The part 
is that of a sort of seventeenth century Captain Costigan, 
only the Miss Fotheringay in the case is the gentleman's 
sister and not his daughter. This lady is moreover an 
ambitious and designing person, who leads her thread-bare 
braggart of a brother quite by the nose. She has entrapped 
a worthy gentleman of Padua, of mature years, and he is 
on the eve of making her his wife, when his son, a clever 
young soldier, beguiles Don Annibal into supping with him, 
and makes him drink so deep that the prating adventurer 
at last lets the cat out of the bag and confides to his com- 
panion that the fair Clorinde is not the virtuous gentle- 
woman she appears, but a poor strolling actress who has 
had a lover at every stage of her journey. The scene was 
played by Bressant and Regnier, and it has always remained 
in my mind as one of the most perfect things I have seen 
on the stage. The gradual action of the wine upon Don 
Annibal, the delicacy with which his deepening tipsiness 
was indicated, its intellectual rather than physical mani- 
festation, and, in the midst of it, the fantastic conceit which 
made him think that he was winding his fellow drinker 
round his fingers — all this was exquisitely rendered. Drunk- 
enness on the stage is usually both dreary and disgusting; 
and I can remember besides this but two really interesting 
pictures of intoxication (excepting always, indeed, the im- 
mortal tipsiness of Cassio in " Othello," which a clever 
actor can always make touching). One is the beautiful 
befuddlement of Rip Van Winkle, as Mr. Joseph Jefferson 
renders it, and the other (a memory of the Theatre Fran- 
gais) the scene in the "Due Job," in which Got succumbs 
to mild inebriation, and dozes in his chair just boosily 
enough for the young girl who loves him to make it out. 

It is to this admirable Emile Got that M. Sarcey's second 
notice is devoted. Got is at the present hour unques- 



384 American Essays 

tionably the first actor at the Theatre Frangais, and I have 
personally no hesitation in accepting him as the first of 
living actors. His younger comrade, Coquelin, has, I think, 
as much talent and as much art; as the older man Got 
has the longer and fuller record and may therefore be 
spoken of as the master. If I were obliged to rank the 
half-dozen premiers sujets of the last few years at the 
Theatre Frangais in their absolute order of talent (thank 
Heaven, I am not so obliged!) I think I should make up 
some such little list as this : Got^ Coquelin, Madame Plessy, 
Sarah Bernhardt, Mademoiselle Favart, Delaunay. I con- 
fess that I have no sooner written it than I feel as if I 
ought to amend it, and wonder whether it is 'not a great 
folly to put Delaunay after Mademoiselle Favart. But this 
is idle. 

As for Got, he is a singularly interesting actor. I have 
often wondered whether the best definition of him would 
not be to say that he is really a philosophic actor. He is an 
immense humorist and his comicality is sometimes colossal ; 
but his most striking quality is the one on which M. Sarcey 
dwells — his sobriety and profundity, his underlying element 
of manliness and melanchojy, the impression he gives you 
of having a general conception of human life and of seeing 
the relativity, as one may say, of the character he repre- 
sents. Of all the comic actors I have seen he is the least 
trivial — at the same time that for richness of detail his comic 
manner is unsurpassed. His repertory is very large and 
various, but it may be divided into two equal halves — the 
parts that belong to reality and the parts that belong to 
fantasy. There is of course a great deal of fantasy in his 
realistic parts and a great deal of reality in his fantastic 
ones, but the general division is just; and at times, indeed, 
the two faces of his talent seem to have little in common. 
The Due Job, to which I just now alluded, is one of the 



The Theatre Francais 385 

things he does most perfectly. The part, which is that of 
a young man, is a serious and tender one. It is amazing that 
the actor who plays it should also be able to carry off 
triumphantly the frantic buffoonery of Maitre Pathelin, or 
should represent the Sganarelle of the ''Medecin Malgre 
Lui " with such an unctuous breadth of humor. The two 
characters, perhaps, which have given me the liveliest idea 
of Got's power and fertility are the Maitre Pathelin and 
the M. Poirier who figures in the title to the comedy which 
Emile Augier and Jules Sandeau wrote together. M. 
Poirier, the retired shopkeeper who marries his daughter 
to a marquis and makes acquaintance with the incommodi- 
ties incidental to such a piece of luck, is perhaps the actor's 
most elaborate creation; it is difficult to see how the por- 
trayal of a type and an individual can have a larger sweep 
and a more minute completeness. The bonhomme Poirier, 
in Got's hands, is really great; and half-a-dozen of the 
actor's modern parts that I could mention are hardly less 
brilliant. But when I think of him I instinctively think first 
of some role in which he wears the cap and gown of a 
period as regards which humorous invention may fairly 
take the bit in its teeth. This is what Got lets it do in 
Maitre Pathelin, and he leads the spectator's exhilarated 
fancy a dance to which the latter"s aching sides on the 
morrow sufficiently testify. 

The piece is a rechauffe of a mediaeval farce which has 
the credit of being the first play not a " mystery " or a 
miracle-piece in the records of the French drama. The plot 
is extremely bald and primitive. It sets forth how a cun- 
ning lawyer undertook to-purchase a dozen ells of cloth for 
nothing. In the first scene we see him in the market-place, 
bargaining and haggling with the draper, and then marching 
off with the roll of cloth, with the understanding that the 
shopman shall call at his house in the course of an hour 



386 American Essays 

for the money. In the next act we have Maitre Pathelin at 
his fireside with his wife, to whom he relates his trick and 
its projected sequel, and who greets them with Homeric 
laughter. He gets into bed, and the innocent draper arrives. 
Then follows a scene of which the liveliest description must 
be ineffective. Pathelin pretends to be out of his head, 
to be overtaken by a mysterious malady which has made 
him delirious, not to know the draper from Adam, never 
to have heard of the dozen ells of cloth, and to be altogether 
an impossible person to collect a debt from. To carry out 
this character he indulges in a series of indescribable antics, 
out-Bedlams Bedlam, frolics over the room dressed out in 
the bed-clothes and chanting the wildest gibberish, bewilders 
the poor draper to within an inch of his own sanity and 
finally puts him utterly to rout. The spectacle could only 
be portentously flat or heroically successful, and in Got's 
hands this latter was its fortune. His Sganarelle, in the 
" Medicin Malgre Liii," and half-a-dozen of his characters 
from Moliere besides — such a part, too, as his Tibia, in 
Alfred de Musset's charming bit of romanticism, the " Ca- 
prices de Marianne '* — have a certain generic resemblance 
with his treatment of the figure I have sketched. In all 
these things the comicality is of the exuberant and tre- 
mendous order, and yet in spite of its richness and flexi- 
bility it suggests little connection with high animal spirits. 
It seems a matter of invention, of reflection and irony. 
You cannot imagine Got representing a fool pure and sim- 
ple — or at least a passive and unsuspecting fool. There 
must always be an element of shrewdness and even of 
contempt; he must be the man who knows and judges — 
or at least who pretends. It is a compliment, I take it, 
to an actor, to say that he prompts you to wonder about his 
private personality; and an observant spectator of M. Got 
is at liberty to guess that he is both obstinate and proud. 



The Theatre Francais 387 

In Coquelin there is perhaps greater spontaneity, and 
there is a not inferior mastery of his art. He is a wonder- 
fully brilliant, elastic actor. He is but thirty-five years 
old, and yet his record is most glorious. He too has his 
" actual " and his classical repertory, and here also it is 
hard to choose. As the young valet de comedie in Moliere 
and Regnard and Marivaux he is incomparable. I shall 
never forget the really infernal brilliancy of his Mascarille 
in " L'Etourdi.'" His volubility, his rapidity, his impu- 
dence and gayety, his ringing, penetrating voice and the 
shrill trumpet-note of his laughter, make him the ideal of 
the classic serving-man of the classic young lover — half 
rascal and half good fellow. Coquelin has lately had two 
or three immense successes in the comedies of the day. 
His Due de Sept-Monts, in the famous " Etrangere " of 
Alexandre Dumas, last winter, was the capital creation of 
the piece ; and in the revival, this winter, of Augier's '' Paul 
Forestier," his Adolphe de Beaubourg, the young man about 
town, consciously tainted with commonness, and trying to 
shake off the incubus, seemed while one watched it and 
listened to it the last word of delicately humorous art. Of 
Coquelin's eminence in the old comedies M. Sarcey speaks 
with a certain pictorial force : " No one is better cut out 
to represent those bold and magnificent rascals of the old 
repertory, with their boisterous gayety, their brilliant fancy 
and their superb extravagance, who give to their buffoonery 
je ne sais quoi d'epique. In these parts one may say of 
Coquelin that he is incomparable. I prefer him to Got in 
such cases, and even to Regnier, his master. I never saw 
Monrose, and cannot speak of him. But good judges have 
assured me that there was much that was factitious in the 
manner of this eminent comedian, and that his vivacity was 
a trifle mechanical. There is nothing whatever of this in 
Coquelin's manner. The eye, the nose, and the voice — the 



388 American Essays 

voice above all — are his most powerful means of action. 
He launches his tirades all in one breath, with full lungs, 
without troubling himself too much over the shading of 
details, in large masses, and he possesses himself only the 
more strongly of the public, which has a great sense of 
ensemble. The words that must be detached, the words 
that must decisively * tell,' glitter in this delivery with the 
sonorous ring of a brand-new louis d'or. Crispin, Scapin, 
Figaro, Mascarille have never found a more valiant and 
joyous interpreter." 

I should say that this was enough about the men at the 
Theatre Frangais, if I did not remember that I have not 
spoken of Delaunay. But Delaunay has plenty of people 
to speak for him ; he has, in especial, the more eloquent half 
of humanity — the ladies. I suppose that of all the actors 
of the Comedie Frangaise he is the most universally appre- 
ciated and admired; he is the popular favorite. And he 
has certainly earned this distinction, for there was never 
a more amiable and sympathetic genius. He plays the 
young lovers of the past and the present, and he acquits 
himself of his difficult and delicate task with extraordinary 
grace and propriety. The danger I spoke of a while since 
— the danger, for the actor of a romantic and sentimental 
part, of being compromised by the coat and trousers, the 
hat and umbrella of the current year — are reduced by 
Delaunay to their minimum. He reconciles in a marvelous 
fashion the love-sick gallant of the ideal world with the 
" gentlemanly man '* of to-day ; and his passion is as far 
removed from rant as his propriety is from stiffness. He 
has been accused of late years of falling into a mannerism, 
and I think there is some truth in the charge. But the 
fault in Delaunay's situation is certainly venial. How can 
a man of fifty, to whom, as regards face and figure. Nature 
has been stingy, play an amorous swain of twenty without 



The Theatre Francais 389 

taking refuge in a mannerism? His mannerism is a legiti- 
mate device for diverting the spectator's attention from cer- 
tain incongruities. Delaunay's juvenility, his ardor, his 
passion, his good taste and sense of fitness, have always an 
irresistible charm. As he has grown older he has increased 
his repertory by parts of greater weight and sobriety — he has 
played the husbands as well as the lovers. One of his most 
recent and brilliant '' creations " of this kind is his Mar- 
quis de Presles in " Le Gendre de M. Poirier " — a piece 
of acting superb for its lightness and desinvolfure. It can- 
not be better praised than by saying it was worthy of Got's 
inimitable rendering of the part opposed to it. But I think 
I shall remember Delaunay best in the picturesque and ro- 
mantic comedies — as the Due de Richelieu in " Mile. De 
Belle-Isle " ; as the joyous, gallant, exuberant young hero, 
his plumes and love knots fluttering in the breath of his 
gushing improvisation, of Corneille's " Menteur " ; or, most 
of all, as the melodious swains of those charmingly poetic, 
faintly, naturally Shakespearean little comedies of Alfred 
de Musset. 

To speak of Delaunay ought to bring us properly to 
Mademoiselle Favart, who for so many years invariably 
represented the object of his tender invocations. Mademoi- 
selle Favart at the present time rather lacks what the French 
call " actuality." She has recently made an attempt to 
recover something of that large measure of it which she 
once possessed; but I doubt whether it has been completely 
successful. M. Sarcey has not yet put forth his notice 
of her; and when he does so it will be interesting to see 
how he treats her. She is not one of his high admirations. 
She is a great talent that has passed into eclipse. I call 
her a great talent, although I remember the words in which 
M. Sarcey somewhere speaks of her : " Mile. Favart, who, 
to happy natural gifts, soutenus par un travail acharne, 



390 American Essays 

owed a distinguished place," etc. Her talent is great, but 
the impression that she gives of a travail acharne and of an 
insatiable ambition is perhaps even greater. For many years 
she reigned supreme, and I believe she is accused of not 
having always reigned generously. However that may be, 
there came a day when Mesdemoiselles Croizette and Sarah 
Bernhardt passed to the front and the elder actress receded, 
if not into the background, at least into what painters call 
the middle distance. The private history of these events 
has, I believe, been rich in heart-burnings; but it is only 
with the public history that we are concerned. Mademoiselle 
Favart has always seemed to me a powerful rather than 
an interesting actress ; there is usually something mechanical 
and overdone in her manner. In some of her parts there 
is a kind of audible creaking of the machinery. If Delau- 
nay is open to the reproach of having let a mannerism get 
the better of him, this accusation is much more fatally true 
of Mademoiselle Favart. On the other hand, she knows 
her trade as no one does — no one, at least, save Madame 
Plessy. When she is bad she is extremely bad, and some- 
times she is interruptedly bad for a whole evening. In the 
revival of Scribe's clever comedy of " Une Chaine," this 
winter (which, by the way, though the cast included both 
Got and Coquelin, was the nearest approach to mediocrity 
I have ever seen at the Theatre Frangais), Mademoiselle 
Favart was, to my sense, startlingly bad. The part had 
originally been played by Madame Plessy; and I remem- 
ber how M. Sarcey in his feuilleton treated its actual repre- 
sentative. '' Mademoiselle Favart does Louise. Who does 
not recall the exquisite delicacy and temperance with which 
Mme. Plessy rendered that difficult scene in the second 
act ? '* etc. And nothing more. When, however, Mademoi- 
selle Favart is at her best, she is remarkably strong. She 
rises to great occasions. I doubt whether such parts as 



The Theatre Francais 391 

the desperate heroine of the ** Siipplice d'une Femme," or 
as Julie in Octave Feuillet's lugubrious drama of that name, 
could be more effectively played than she plays them. She 
can carry a great v^eight v^ithout flinching; she has what 
the French call " authority *' ; and in declamation she some- 
times unrolls her fine voice, as it were, in long harmonious 
waves and cadences the sustained power of which her 
younger rivals must often envy her. 

I am drawing to the close of these rather desultory obser- 
vations without having spoken of the four ladies com- 
memorated by M. Sarcey in the publication which lies before 
me; and I do not know that I can justify my tardiness 
otherwise than by saying that writing and reading about 
artists of so extreme a personal brilliancy is poor work, and 
that the best the critic can do is to wish his reader may 
see them, from a quiet fautenil, as speedily and as often 
as possible. Of Madeleine Brohan, indeed, there is little 
to say. She is a delightful person to listen to, and she is 
still delightful to look at, in spite of that redundancy of 
contour which time has contributed to her charms. But 
she has never been ambitious and her talent has had no 
particularly original quality. It is a long time since she 
created an important part ; but in the old repertory her rich, 
dense voice, her charming smile, her mellow, tranquil gayety, 
always give extreme pleasure. To hear her sit and talk, simply, 
and laugh and play with her fan, along with Madame Plessy, 
in Moliere's '* Critique de I'Ecole des Femmes," is an enter- 
tainment to be remembered. For Madame Plessy I should 
have to mend my pen and begin a new chapter; and for 
Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt no less a ceremony would 
suffice. I saw Madame Plessy for the first time in Emile 
Augier's " Aventuriere,'' when, as I mentioned, I first saw 
Regnier. This is considered by many persons her best 
part, and she certainly carries it off with a high hand; 



392 American Essays 

but I like her better in characters which afford more scope 
to her talents for comedy. These characters are very nu- 
merous, for her activity and versatility have been extraor- 
dinary. Her comedy of course is " high " ; it is of the highest 
conceivable kind, and she has often been accused of being 
too mincing and too artificial. I should never make this 
charge, for, to me, Madame Plessy's minauderies, her grand 
airs and her arch-refinements, have never been anything 
but the odorous swayings and queenly tossings of some 
splendid garden flower. Never had an actress grander 
manners. When Madame Plessy represents a duchess you 
have no allowances to make. Her limitations are on the 
side of the pathetic. If she is brilliant, she is cold; and I 
cannot imagine her touching the source of tears. But she 
is in the highest degree accomplished ; she gives an impres- 
sion of intelligence and intellect which is produced by none 
of her companions — excepting always the extremely excep- 
tional Sarah Bernhardt. Madame Plessy's intellect has 
sometimes misled her — as, for instance, when it whispered 
to her, a few years since, that she could play Agrippine in 
Racine's " Britannicus," on that tragedy being presented 
for the debuts of Mounet-Sully. I was verdant enough to 
think her Agrippine very fine. But M. Sarcey reminds his 
readers of what he said of it the Monday after the first 
performance. " I will not say " — he quotes himself — " that 
Madame Plessy is indifferent. With her intelligence, her 
natural gifts, her great situation, her immense authority 
over the public, one cannot be indifferent in anything. She 
is therefore not indifferently bad. She is bad to a point 
that cannot be expressed and that would be distressing for 
dramatic art if it were not that in this great shipwreck there 
rise to the surface a few floating fragments of the finest 
qualities that nature has ever bestowed upon an artist." 
Madame Plessy retired from the stage six months ago 



The Theatre Francais 393 

and it may be said that the void produced by this event is 
irreparable. There is not only no prospect, but there is n6 
hope of filling it up. The present conditions of artistic 
production are directly hostile to the formation of actresses 
as consummate and as complete as Madame Plessy. One 
may not expect to see her like, any more than one may ex- 
pect to see a new manufacture of old lace an'd old brocade. 
She carried off with her something that the younger gen- 
eration of actresses will consistently lack — a certain large- 
ness of style and robustness of art. (These qualities are 
in a modified degree those of Mademoiselle Favart.) But if 
the younger actresses have the success of Mesdemoiselles 
Croizette and Sarah Bernhardt, will they greatly care 
whether they are not "robust"? These young ladies are 
children of a later and eminently contemporary type, accord- 
ing to which an actress undertakes not to interest but to 
fascinate. They are charming — ''awfully" charming; 
strange, eccentric, imaginative. It would be needless to 
speak specifically of Mademoiselle Croizette ; for although 
she has very great attractions I think she may (by the cold 
impartiality of science) be classified as a secondary, a less 
inspired and (to use the great word of the day) a more 
"brutal" Sarah Bernhardt. (Mademoiselle Croizette's 
" brutality " is her great card.) As for Mademoiselle Sarah 
Bernhardt, she is simply, at present, in Paris, one of the 
great figures of the day. It would be hard to imagine a 
more brilliant embodiment of feminine success ; she deserves 
a chapter for herself. 
December, 1876. 



THEOCRITUS ON CAPE COD 
Hamilton Wright Mabie 

Cape Cod lies at the other end of the world from Sicily 
not only in distance, but in the look of it, the lay of it, the 
way of it. It is so far off that it offers a base from which 
one may get a fresh view of Theocritus. 

There are very pleasant villages on the Cape, in the wide 
shade of ancient elms, 3et deep in the old-time New Eng- 
land quiet. For there was a time before the arrival of the 
Syrians, the Armenians, and the automobile, when New 
England was in a meditative mood. But Cape Cod is really 
a ridge of sand with a backbone of soil, rashly thrust into 
the Atlantic, and as fluent and volatile, so to speak, as one 
of those far Western rivers that are shifting currents sub- 
limely indifferent to private ownership. The Cape does 
not lack stability, but it shifts its lines with easy disregard 
of charts and boundaries, and remains stable only at its 
center; it is always fraying at the edges. It lies, too, on 
the western edge of the ocean stream, where the forces of 
land and sea are often at war and the palette of colors is 
limited. The sirocco does not sift fine sand through every 
crevice and fill the heart of man with murderous impulses ; 
but the east wind diffuses a kind of elemental depression. 

Sicily, on the other hand, is high-built on rocky founda- 
tions, and is the wide-spreading reach of a great volcano 
sloping broadly and leisurely to the sea. It is often shaken 
at its center, but the sea does not take from nor add to its 
substance at will. It lies in the very heart of a sea of 

394 



Theocritus on Cape Cod 395 

such ravishing color that by sheer fecundity of beauty it 
has given birth to a vast fellowship of gods and divinely fash- 
ioned creatures; its slopes are white with billowy masses 
of almond blossoms in that earlier spring which is late 
winter on Cape Cod ; while gray-green, gnarled, and twisted 
olive-trees bear witness to the passionate moods of the 
Mediterranean, mother of poetry, comedy, and tragedy, 
often asleep in a dream of beauty in which the shadowy 
figures of the oldest time move, often as violent as the 
North Atlantic when March torments it with furious moods. 
For the Mediterranean is as seductive, beguiling, and un- 
certain of temper as Cleopatra, as radiant as Hera, as 
voluptuous as Aphrodite. Put in terms of color, it is as 
different from the sea round Cape Cod as a picture by 
Sorolla is different from a picture by Mauve. 

Theocritus is interested in the magic of the island rather 
than in the mystery of the many-sounding sea, and to him 
the familiar look of things is never edged like a photograph ; 
it is as solid and real as a report of the Department of 
Agriculture, but a mist of poetry is spread over it, in which, 
as in a Whistler nocturne, many details harmonize in a 
landscape at once actual and visionary. There is no ex- 
ample in literature of the unison of sight and vision more 
subtly and elusively harmonious than the report of Sicily 
in the Idylls. In its occupations the island was as prosaic 
as Cape Cod, and lacked the far-reaching consciousness of 
the great world which is the possession of every populated 
sand-bar in the Western world ; but it was enveloped in an 
atmOvSphere in which the edges of things were lost in a sense 
of their rootage in poetic relations, and of interrelations so 
elusive and immaterial that a delicate but persistent charm 
exhaled from them. 

Sicily was a solid and stubborn reality thousands of years 
before Theocritus struck his pastoral lyre; but its most 



39^ American Essays 

obvious quality was atmospheric. It was compacted of 
facts, but they were seen not as a camera sees, but as an 
artist sees; not in sharp outline and hard actuality, but 
softened by a flood of light which melts all hard lines in a 
landscape vibrant and shimmering. Our landscape-painters 
are now reporting Nature as Theocritus saw her in Sicily; 
the value of the overtone matching the value of the under- 
tone, to quote an artist's phrase, " apply these tones in right 
proportions," writes Mr. Harrison, '' and you will find that 
the sky painted with the perfectly matched tone will fly 
away indefinitely, will be bathed in a perfect atmosphere."' 
We who have for a time lost the poetic mood and strayed 
from the poet's standpoint paint the undertones with entire 
fidelity ; but we do not paint in the overtones, and the land- 
scape loses the luminous and vibrant quality which comes 
into it when the sky rains light upon it. We see with the 
accuracy of the camera; we do not see with the vision of 
the poet, in which reality is not sacrificed, but subdued to 
larger uses. We insist on the scientific fact; the poet is 
intent on the visual fact. The one gives the bare structure 
of the landscape ; the other gives us its color, atmosphere, 
charm. Here, perhaps, is the real difference between Cape 
Cod and Sicily. It is not so much a contrast between en- 
circling seas and the sand-ridge and rock-ridge as between 
the two ways of seeing, the scientific and the poetic. 

The difference of soils must also be taken into account. 
The soil of history on Cape Cod is almost as thin as the 
physical soil, which is so light and detached that it is blown 
about by all the winds of heaven. In Sicily, on the other 
hand, the soil is so much a part of the substance of the 
island that the sirocco must bring from the shores of Africa 
the fine particles with which it tortures men. On Cape 
Cod there are a few colonial traditions, many heroic memo- 
ries of brave deeds in awful seas, some records of pros- 



Theocritus on Cape Cod 397 

perous daring in fishing-ships, and then the advent of the 
summer colonists; a creditable history, but of so recent 
date that it has not developed the fructifying power of a 
rich soil, out of which atmosphere rises like an exhalation. 
In Sicily, on the other hand, the soil of history is so deep 
that the spade of the archaeologist has not touched bottom, 
and even the much-toiling Freeman found four octavo 
volumes too cramped to tell the whole story, and merci- 
fully stopped at the death of Agathocles. 

Since the beginning of history, which means only the 
brief time since we began to remember events, everybody has 
gone to Sicily, and most people have stayed there until they 
were driven on, or driven out, by later comers ; and almost 
everybody has been determined to keep the island for him- 
self, and set about it with an ingenuity and energy of 
slaughter which make the movement toward universal peace 
seem pallid and nerveless. It is safe to say that on no bit 
of ground of equal area has more history been enacted than 
in Sicily; and when Theocritus was young, Sicily was al- 
ready venerable with years and experience. 

Now, history, using the word as signifying things which 
have happened, although enacted on the ground, gets into 
the air, and one often feels it before he knows it. In this 
volatile and pervasive form it is diffused over the land- 
scape and becomes atmospheric; and atmosphere, it must 
be remembered, bears the same relation to air that the coun- 
tenance bears to the face : it reveals and expresses what is 
behind the physical features. There is hardly a half-mile 
of Sicily below the upper ridges of ^tna that has not been 
fought over; and the localities are few which cannot show 
the prints of the feet of the gods or of the heroes who were 
their children. 

It was a very charming picture on which the curtain 
was rolled up when history began, but the island was not 



39^ American Essays 

a theater in which men sat at ease and looked at Persephone 
in the arms of Pluto; it was an arena in which race fol- 
lowed close upon race, like the waves of the sea, each rising 
a little higher and gaining a little wider sweep, and each 
leaving behind not only wreckage, but layers of soil potent 
in vitality. The island was as full of strange music, of 
haunting presences, of far-off memories of tragedy, as the 
island of the Tempest: it bred its Calibans, but it bred 
also its Prosperos. For the imagination is nourished by 
rich associations as an artist is fed by a beautiful landscape ; 
and in Sicily men grew up in an invisible world of memo- 
ries that spread a heroic glamor over desolate places and 
kept Olympus within view of the mountain pastures where 
rude shepherds cut their pipes : 

" A pipe discoursing through nine mouths I made, full fair to view ; 
The wax is white thereon, the line of this and that edge true." 

The soil of history may be so rich that it nourishes all 
manner of noxious things side by side with flowers of glori- 
ous beauty; this is the price we pay for fertility. A thin 
soil, on the other hand, sends a few flowers of delicate struc- 
ture and haunting fragrance into the air, like the arbutus 
and the witchiana, which express the clean, dry sod of Cape 
Cod, and are symbolic of the poverty and purity of its 
history. Thoreau reports that in one place he saw adver- 
tised, " Fine sand for sale here," and he ventures the sug- 
gestion that " some of the street '' had been sifted. And, 
possibly, with a little tinge of malice after his long fight 
with winds and shore-drifts, he reports that '' in some pic- 
tures of Provincetown the persons of the inhabitants are 
not drawn below the ankles, so much being supposed to be 
buried in the sand." " Nevertheless," he continues, " na- 
tives of Provincetown assured me that they could walk in 
the middle of the road without trouble, even in slippers. 



Theocritus on Cape Cod 399 

for they had learned how to put their feet down and lift 
them up without taking in any sand." On a soil so light 
and porous there is a plentiful harvesting of health and 
substantial comfort, but not much chance of poetry. 

In the country of Theocritus there was great chance for 
poetry; not because anybody was taught anything, but be- 
cause everybody was born in an atmosphere that was a 
diffused poetry. If this had not been true, the poet could 
not have spread a soft mist of poesy over the whole island : 
no man works that kind of magic unaided ; he compounds 
his potion out of simple's culled from the fields round him. 
Theocritus does not disguise the rudeness of the life he 
describes ; goat-herds and he-goats are not the conventional 
properties of the poetic stage. The poet was without a 
touch of the drawing-room consciousness of crude things, 
though he knew well softness and charm of life in Syracuse 
under a tyrant who did not " patronize the arts," but was 
instructed by them. To him the distinction between poetic 
and unpoetic things was not in the appearance, but in the 
root. He was not ashamed of Nature as he found her, and 
he never apologized for her coarseness by avoiding things 
not fit for refined eyes. His shepherds and goat-herds are 
often gross and unmannerly, and as stuffed with noisy abuse 
as Shakespeare's people in '' Richard III." Lacon and 
Cometas, rival poets of the field, are having a controversy, 
and this is the manner of their argument : 

" LACON 

"When learned I from thy practice or thy preaching attght that's 
right, 
Thou puppet, thou mis-shapen lump of ugliness and spite? 

'' COMETAS 

"When? When I beat thee, wailing sore; your goats looked on 
with glee, 
And bleated ; and were dealt with e'en as I had dealt with thee." 



400 American Essays 

And then, without a pause, the landscape shines through 
the noisy talk: 

" Nay, here are oaks and galingale : the hum of housing bees 
Makes the place pleasant, and the birds are piping in the trees, 
And here are two cold streamlets ; here deeper shadows fall 
Than yon place owns, and look what cones drop from the pine 
tree tall." 

Thoreau, to press the analogy from painting a little 
further, lays the undertones on with a firm hand : " It is a 
wild, rank place and there is no flattery in it. Strewn with 
crabs, horse-shoes, and razor-clams, and whatever the sea 
casts up, — a vast morgue, where famished dogs may range 
in packs, and cows come daily to glean the pittance which 
the tide leaves them. The carcasses of men and beasts to- 
gether lie stately up upon its shelf, rotting and bleaching 
in the sun and waves, and each tide turns them in their 
beds, and tucks fresh sand under them. There- is naked 
Nature, — inhumanely sincere, wasting no thought on man, 
nibbling at the cliffy shore where gulls wheel amid the' 
spray.'' 

It certainly is naked Nature with a vengeance, and it 
was hardly fair to take her portrait in that condition. 
Theocritus would have shown us Acteon surprising Artemis, 
not naked, but nude; and there is all the difference between 
nakedness and nudity that yawns between a Greek statue 
and a Pompeiian fresco indiscreetly preserved in the mu- 
seum at Naples. Theocritus shows Nature nude, but not 
naked; and it is worth noting that the difference between 
the two lies in the presence or absence of consciousness. In 
Greek mythology, nudity passes without note or comment; 
the moment it begins to be noted and commented upon it 
becomes nakedness. 

Theocritus sees Nature nude, as did all the Greek poets, 



Theocritus on Cape Cod 401 

but he does not surprise her when she is naked. He paints 
the undertones faithfully, but he always lays on the over- 
tones, and so spreads the effulgence of the sky-stream over 
the undertones, and the picture becomes vibrant and lu- 
minous. The fact is never slurred or ignored; it gets full 
value, but not as a solitary and detached thing untouched 
by light, unmodified by the landscape. Is there a more 
charming impression of a landscape bathed in atmosphere, 
exhaling poetry, breathing in the very presence of divinity, 
than this, in Calverley's translation : 

*' I ceased. He, smiling sweetly as before, 
Gave me the staff, ' the Muses' ' parting gift, 
And leftward sloped toward Pyxa. We the while 
Bent us to Phrasydene's, Eucritus and I, 
And baby-faced Amyntas : there we lay 
Half-buried in a couch of fragrant reed 
And fresh-cut vine leaves, who so glad as we? 
A wealth of elm and poplar shook o'erhead ; 
Hard by, a sacred spring flowed gurgling on 
From the Nymphs' grot, and in the somber boughs 
The sweet cicada chirped laboriously. 
Hid in the thick thorn-bushes far away 
The tree frog's note was heard ; the crested lark 
Sang with the goldfinch ; turtles made their moan ; 
And o'er the fountain hung the gilded bee. 
All of rich summer smacked, of autumn all : 
Pekrs at our feet, and apples at our side 
Rolled in luxuriance ; branches on the ground 
Sprawled, overweighted with damsons ; while we brushed 
From the cask's head the crust of four long years. 
Say, ye who dwell upon Parnassian peaks. 
Nymphs of Castalia, did old Chiron e'er 
Set before Hercules a cup so brave 
In Pholus' cavern — did as nectarous draughts 
Cause that Anapian shepherd, in whose hand 
Rocks were as pebbles, Polypheme the strong, 
Featly to foot it o'er the cottage lawns : — 
As, ladies, ye bid flow that day for us 
All by Demeter's shrine at harvest-home? 
Beside whose corn-stacks may I oft again 
Plant my broad fan : while she stands by and smiles, 
Poppies and corn-sheaves on each laden arm." 



402 American Essays 

Here is the landscape seen with a poet's eye ; and the 
color and shining quality of a landscape, it must be remem- 
bered, are in the exquisitely sensitive eye that sees, not 
in the structure and substance upon which it rests. The 
painter and poet create nature as really as they create art, 
for in every clear sight of the world we are not passive 
receivers of impressions, but partners in that creative work 
which makes nature as contemporaneous as the morning 
newspaper. 

It is true, Sicily was poetic in its very structure while 
Cape Cod is poetic only in oases, bits of old New England 
shade and tracery of elms, the peace of ancient sincerity 
and content honestly housed, the changing color of marshes 
in whose channels the tides are singing or mute; but the 
Sicily of Theocritus was seen by the poetic eye. In every 
complete vision of a landscape what is behind the eye is 
as important as what lies before it, and behind the eyes 
that looked at Sicily in the third century, B.C., there were 
not only the memories of many generations, but there was 
also a faith in visible and invisible creatures which peopled 
the world with divinities. The text of Theocritus is starred 
with the names of gods and goddesses, of heroes and poets : 
it is like a rich tapestry, on the surface of which history 
has been woven in beautiful colors; the flat surface dis- 
solves in a vast distance, and the dull warp and woof glows 
with moving life. 

The Idylls are saturated with religion, and as devoid 
of piety as a Bernard Shaw play. Gods and men differ 
only in their power, not at all in their character. What 
we call morals were as conspicuously absent from Olympus 
as from Sicily. In both places life and the world are taken 
in their obvious intention ; there was no attempt, apart from 
the philosophers, who are always an inquisitive folk, to 
discover either the mind or the heart of things. In the 



Theocritus on Cape Cod 403 

Greek Bible, which Homer composed and recited to crowds 
of people on festive occasions, the fear of the gods and 
their vengeance are set forth in a text of unsurpassed force 
and vitality of imagination ; but no god in his most dissolute 
mood betrays any moral consciousness, and no man repents 
of sins. That things often go wrong was as obvious then as 
now, but there was no sense of sin. There were Greeks 
who prayed, but none who put dust on his head and beat 
his breast and cried, " Woe unto me, a sinner ! " There 
were disasters by land and sea, but no newspaper spread 
them out in shrieking type, and by skillful omission and 
selection of topics wore the semblance of an official report 
of a madhouse ; there were diseases and deaths, but patent- 
medicine advertisements had not saturated the common 
mind with ominous symptoms; old age was present with 
its monitions of change and decay : 

"Age o'ertakes us all; 
Our tempers first; then on o'er cheek and chin, 
Slowly and surely, creep the frosts of Time. 
Up and go somewhere, ere thy Hmbs are sere." 

Theocritus came late in the classical age, and the shadows 
had deepened since Homer's time. The torches on the 
tombs were inverted, the imagery of immortality was faint 
and dim ; but the natural world was still naturally seen, and, 
if age was coming down the road, the brave man went 
bravely forward to meet the shadow. 

It was different on Cape Cod. Even Thoreau, who had 
escaped from the morasses of theology into the woods and 
accomplished the reversion to paganism in the shortest 
possible manner, never lost the habit of moralizing, which 
is a survival of the deep-going consciousness of sin. De- 
scribing the operations of a sloop dragging for anchors and 
chains, he gives his text those neat, hard touches of fancy 



404 American Essays 

which he had at command even in his most uncompromising, 
semi-scientific moments : " To hunt to-day in pleasant 
weather for anchors which had been lost, — the sunken faith 
and hope of mariners, to which they trusted in vain; now, 
perchance it is the rusty one of some old pirate ship or 
Norman fisherman, whose cable parted here two hun- 
dred years ago, and now the best bower anchor of a 
Canton or California ship which has gone about her busi- 
ness." 

And then he drops into the depths of the moral subcon- 
sciousness from which the clear, clean waters of Walden 
Pond could not wash him : '' If the roadsteads of the spir- 
itual ocean could be thus dragged, what rusty flukes of hope 
deceived and parted chain-cables of faith might again be 
windlassed aboard ! enough to sink the finder's craft, or 
stock new navies to the end of time. The bottom of the 
sea is strewn with anchors, some deeper and some shal- 
lower, and alternately covered and uncovered by the sand, 
perchance with a small length of iron cable still attached, 
to which where is the other end? . . . So, if we had diving 
bells adapted to the spiritual deeps, we should see anchors 
with their cables attached, as thick as eels in vinegar, 
all wriggling vainly toward their holding ground. But 
that is not treasure for us which another man has 
lost; rather it is for us to seek what no other man has 
found or can find." The tone is light, almost trifling, 
when one takes into account the imagery and the idea, 
and the subconsciousness is wearing thin; but it is still 
there. 

Thoreau's individual consciousness was a very faint re- 
flection of an ancestral consciousness of the presence of 
sin, and of moral obligations of an intensity almost incon- 
ceivable in these degenerate days. There was a time in a 
Cape Cod community when corporal punishment was in- 



Theocritus on Cape Cod 405 

flicted on all residents who denied the Scriptures, and all 
persons who stood outside the meeting-house during the time 
of divine service were set in the stocks. The way of right- 
eousness was not a straight and narrow path, but a macad- 
amized thoroughfare, and woe to the man who ventured 
on a by-path ! One is not surprised to learn that " hysteric 
fits " were very common, and that congregations were often 
thrown into the utmost confusion; for the preaching was 
far from quieting. " Some think sinning ends with this 
life,*' said a well-known preacher, *' but it is a mistake. 
The creature is held under an everlasting law; the damned 
increase in sin in hell. Possibly, the mention of this may 
please thee. But, remember, there shall be no pleasant sins 
there; no eating, drinking, singing, dancing; wanton dal- 
liance, and drinking stolen waters ; but damned sins, bitter, 
hellish sins ; sins exasperated by torments ; cursing God, 
spite, rage, and blasphemy. The guilt of all thy sins shall 
be laid upon thy soul, and be made so many heaps of fuel. 
. . . He damns sinners heaps upon heaps." 

It is not surprising to learn that as a result of such preach- 
ing the hearers were several times greatly alarmed, and 
'' on one occasion a comparatively innocent young man was 
frightened nearly out of his wits." One wonders in what 
precise sense the word '' comparatively " was used ; it is 
certain that those who had this sense of the sinfulness 
of things driven into them were too thoroughly frightened 
to see the world with the poet's eye. 

In Sicily nobody was concerned for the safety of his soul ; 
nobody was aware that he had a soul to be saved. Thought- 
ful people knew that certain things gave offense to the 
gods ; that you must not flaunt your prosperity after the 
fashion of some American millionaires, who have discovered 
in recent years that there is a basis of fact for the Greek 
feeling that it is wise to hold great possessions modestly; 



4o6 American Essays 

that certain family and state relations are sacred, and that 
the fate of CEdipus was a warning : but nobody was making 
observations of his own frame of mind ; there were no ther- 
mometers to take the spiritual temperature. 

In his representative capacity as poet, Theocritus, speak- 
ing for his people, might have said with Gautier, " I am a 
man for whom the visible world exists." It is as impos- 
sible to cut the visible world loose from the invisible 
as to see the solid stretch of earth without seeing the light 
that streams upon it and makes the landscape; but Gautier 
came as near doing the impossible as any man could, and the 
goat-herds and pipe-players of Theocritus measurably ap- 
proached this instable position. On Cape Cod, it is true, 
they looked " up and not down," but it is also true that 
they '* looked in and not out " ; in Sicily they looked neither 
up nor down, but straight ahead. The inevitable shadows 
fell across the fields whence the distracted Demeter sought 
Persephone, and Enceladus, uneasily bearing the weight of 
^'tna, poured out the vials of his wrath on thriving vine- 
yards and on almond orchards white as with sea-foam; but 
the haunting sense of disaster in some other world beyond 
the dip of the sea was absent. If the hope of living with 
the gods was faint and far, and the forms of vanished heroes 
were vague and dim, the fear of retribution beyond the gate 
of death was a mere blurring of the landscape by a mist 
that came and went. 

The two workmen whose talk Theocritus overhears and 
reports in the Tenth Idyll are not discussing the welfare of 
their souls ; they are not even awake to the hard conditions 
of labor, and take no thought about shorter hours and 
higher wages : they are interested chiefly in Bombyca, " lean, 
dusk, a gypsy," 

". . . twinkling dice thy feet, 
Poppies thy lips, thy ways none knows how sweet ! " 



Theocritus on Cape Cod 407 

And they lighten the hard task of the reaper of the stub- 
born corn in this fashion : 

" O rich in fruit and corn-blade : be this field 
Tilled well, Demeter, and fair fruitage yield! 

" Bind the sheaves, reapers : lest one, passing, say — • 
* A fig for these, they're never worth their pay ! ' 

" Let the mown swathes look northward, ye who mow, 
Or westward — for the ears grow fattest so. 

" Avoid a noon-tide nap, ye threshing men : 
The chaff flies thickest from the corn-ears then. 

" Wake when the lark wakes ; when he slumbers close 
Your work, ye reapers : and at noontide doze. 

" Boys, the frogs' life for me ! They need not him 
Who fills the flagon, for in drink they swim. 

" Better boil herbs, thou toiler after gain, 
Than, splitting cummin, split thy hand in twain." 

In Sicily no reckoning of the waste of life had been kept, 
and armies and fleets had been spent as freely in the tu- 
multuous centuries of conquest as if, in the over-abundance 
of life, these losses need not be entered in the book of 
account. Theocritus distils this sense of fertility from the 
air, and the leaves of the Idylls are fairly astir with it. The 
central myth of the island has a meaning quite beyond the 
reach of accident ; poetic as it is, its symbolism seems almost 
scientific. Under skies so full of the light which, in a real 
sense, creates the landscape, encircled by a sea which was 
fecund of gods and goddesses, Sicily was the teeming mother 
of flower-strewn fields and trees heavy with fruit, trunks 
and boughs made firm by winds as the fruit grew mellow in 
the sun. Demeter moved through harvest-fields and across 
the grassy slopes where herds are fed, a smiling goddess, 

" Poppies and corn-sheaves on each laden arm." 



4o8 American Essays 

Forgetfulness of the ills of life, dreams of Olympian beauty 
and tempered energy in the fields — are not these the secrets 
of the fair world which survives in the Idylls? 

The corn and wine were food for the gods who gave them 
as truly as for the men who plucked the ripened grain and 
pressed the fragrant grape. If there was a sense of awe 
in the presence of the gods, there was no sense of moral 
separation, no yawning chasm of unworthiness. The gods 
obeyed their impulses not less readily than the men and 
women they had created ; both had eaten of the fruit of the 
tree of life, but neither had eaten of the tree of knowledge 
of good and evil. Anybody might happen upon Pan in 
some deeply shadowed place, and the danger of surprising 
Diana at her bath was not wholly imaginary. Religion was 
largely the sense of being neighbor to the gods ; they were 
more prosperous than men and had more power, but they 
were different only in degree, and one might be on easy 
terms with them. They were created by the poetic mind, 
and they repaid it a thousand-fold with the consciousness 
of a world haunted by near, familiar, and radiant divinity. 
The heresy which shattered the unity of life by dividing 
it between the religious and the secular had not come to 
confuse the souls of the good and put a full half of life 
in the hands of sinners ; religion was as natural as sunlight 
and as easy as breathing. 

There was little philosophy and less science in Sicily as 
Theocritus reports it. The devastating passion for knowl- 
edge had not brought self-consciousness in like a tide, nor 
had the desire to know about things taken the place of 
knowledge of the things themselves. The beauty of the 
world was a matter of experience, not of formal observa- 
tion, and was seen directly as artists see a landscape before 
they bring technical skill to reproduce it. So far as the 
men and women who work and sing and make love in the 



Theocritus on Cape Cod 409 

Idylls were concerned, the age was delightfully unintel- 
lectual and, therefore, normally poetic. The vocabulary 
of names for things was made up of descriptive rather than 
analytical words, and things were seen in wholes rather 
than in parts. 

From this point of view religion was as universal and 
all-enfolding as air, and the gods were as concrete and 
tangible as trees and rocks and stars. They were compan- 
ionable with all sorts and conditions of men, and if one 
wished to represent them, he used symbols and images of 
divinely fashioned men and women, not philosophical ideas 
or scientific formulae. In this respect the Roman Catholic 
Church has been both a wise teacher and a tender guardian 
of lonely and sorrowful humanity. Homer was not a formal 
theologian, but the harvest of the seed of thought he sowed 
is not even now fully gathered. He peopled the whole world 
of imagination. Christianity is not only concrete but his- 
toric, and some day, when the way of abstraction has been 
abandoned for that way of vital knowledge, which is the 
path of the prophets, the saints, and the artists, it will 
again set the imagination aflame. Meantime Theocritus 
is a charming companion for those who hunger and thirst 
for beauty, and who long from time to time to hang up 
the trumpet of the reformer, and give themselves up to 
the song of the sea and the simple music of the shep- 
herd's pipe. 



COLONIALISM IN THE UNITED STATES* 

Henry Cabot Lodge 

Nothing is more interesting than to trace, through many 
years and almost endless wanderings and changes, the for- 
tunes of an idea or habit of thought. The subject is a 
much-neglected one, even in these days of sweeping and 
minute investigation, because the inherent difficulties are 
so great, and the necessary data so multifarious, confused, 
and sometimes contradictory, that absolute proof and smooth 
presentation seem well-nigh impossible. Yet the ideas, the 
opinions, even the prejudices of men, impalpable and in- 
definite as they are, have at times a wonderful vitality and 
force and are not without meaning and importance when 
looked at with considerate eyes. The conditions under 
which they have been developed may change, or pass utterly 

* This essay appeared originally in the Atlantic Monthly for 
May, 1883. During the thirty years which have elapsed since it was 
written the manifestations of the colonial spirit then apparent in the 
United States have not only altered in character but, 1 am glad to 
say, have weakened, diminished, and become less noticeable. Since 
1883, also, there has been much achieved by Americans in Art and 
Literature, in painting, in sculpture, in music, and particularly in 
architecture. Success in all these fields has, with few exceptions, 
been won by men working in the spirit which is not colonial, but 
which it was the purpose of this essay to inculcate as the true one 
to which alone we could look for fine and enduring achievement. 
I have called attention to the date at which the essay was written 
in order that those who read it may remember that it applies in 
certain points to the conditions of thirty years ago and not to those 
of the present day. 

410 



Colonialism in the United States 411 

away, while they, mere shadowy creations of the mind, will 
endure for generations. Long after the world to which it 
belonged has vanished, a habit of thought will live on, in- 
delibly imprinted upon a race or nation, like the footprint 
of some extinct beast or bird upon a piece of stone. The 
solemn bigotry of the Spaniard is the fossil trace of the fierce 
struggle of eight hundred years with the Moors. The theory 
of the Lord's day peculiar to the English race all over the 
world is the deeply branded sign of the brief reign of Puri- 
tanism. A certain fashion of thought prevailed half a 
century ago ; another is popular to-day. There is a resem- 
blance between the two, the existence of both is recognized, 
and both, without much consideration, are set down as 
sporadic and independent, which is by no means a safe 
conclusion. We have all heard of those rivers which are 
suddenly lost to sight in the bowels of the earth, and, 
coming as suddenly again to the surface, flow onward to 
the sea as before. Or the wandering stream may turn aside 
into fresh fields, and, with new shapes and colors, seem 
to have no connection with the waters of its source or with 
those which finally mingle with the ocean. Yet, despite 
the disappearances and the changes, it is always the same 
river. It is exactly so with some kinds of ideas and modes 
of thought, — those that are wholly distinct from the count- 
less host of opinions which perish utterly, and are forgotten 
in a few years, or which are still oftener the creatures of 
a day, or an hour, and die Ky myriads, like the short-lived 
insects whose course is run between sunrise and sunset. 

The purpose of this essay is to discuss briefly certain 
opinions which belong to the more enduring class. They 
are sufficiently well known. When they are mentioned 
everyone will recognize them, and will admit their existence 
at the particular period to which they belong. The point 
which is overlooked is their connection and relationship. 



412 American Essays 

They all have the same pedigree, a marked resemblance to 
each other, and they derive their descent from a common 
ancestor. My intention is merely to trace the pedigree and 
narrate the history of this numerous and interesting family 
of ideas and habits of thought. I have entitled them col- 
lectively " Colonialism in the United States," a description 
which is perhaps more comprehensive than satisfactory or 
exact. 

In the year of grace 1776, we published to the world 
our Declaration of Independence. Six years later, Eng- 
land assented to the separation. These are tolerably familiar 
facts. That we have been striving ever since to make that 
independence real and complete, and that the work is not 
yet entirely finished, are not, perhaps, equally obvious tru- 
isms. The hard fighting by which we severed our connection 
with the mother-country was in many ways the least difficult 
part of the work of building up a great and independent 
nation. The decision of the sword may be rude, but it is 
pretty sure to be speedy. Armed revolution is quick. A 
South American, in the exercise of his constitutional privi- 
leges, will rush into the street and declare a revolution in 
five minutes. A Frenchman will pull down one government 
to-day, and set up another to-morrow, besides giving new 
names to all the principal streets of Paris during the inter- 
vening night. We English-speaking people do not move 
quite so fast. We come more slowly to the boiling point; 
we are not fond of violent changes, and when we make 
them we consume a considerable time i-n the operation. Still, 
at the best, a revolution by force of arms is an affair of a 
few years. We broke with England in 1776, we had won 
our victory in 1782, and by the year 1789 we had a new 
national government fairly started. 

But if we are slower than other people in the conduct 
of revolutions, owing largely to our love of dogged fight- 



Colonialism in the United States 413 

ing and inability to recognize defeat, we are infinitely more 
deliberate than our neighbors in altering, or even modifying, 
our ideas and modes of thought. The slow mind and 
ingrained conservatism of the English race are the chief 
causes of their marvelous political and material success. 
After much obstinate fighting in the field, they have carried 
through the few revolutions which they have seen fit to 
engage in; but when they have undertaken to extend these 
revolutions to the domain of thought, there has arisen a 
spirit of stubborn and elusive resistance, which has seemed 
to set every efifort, and even time itself, at defiance. 

By the treaty of Paris our independence was acknowl- 
edged, and in name and theory was complete. We then 
entered upon the second stage in the conflict, that of ideas 
and opinions. True to our race and to our instincts, and 
with a wisdom which is one of the glories of our history, 
we carefully preserved the principles and forms of gov- 
ernment and law, which traced an unbroken descent and 
growth from the days of the Saxon invasion. But while 
we kept so much that was of inestimable worth, we also 
retained, inevitably, of course, something which it would 
have been well for us to have shaken of¥ together with the 
rule of George III. and the British Parliament. This was 
the colonial spirit in our modes of thought. 

The word " colonial '' is preferable to the more obvious 
word " provincial," because the former is absolute, while 
the latter, by usage, has become in a great measure relative. 
We are very apt to call an opinion, a custom, or a neigh- 
bor " provincial," because we do not like the person or thing 
in question ; and in this way the true value of the word has 
of late been frittered away. " Colonialism," moreover, has 
in this connection historical point and value, while " provin- 
cialism " is general and meaningless. Colonialism is also 
susceptible of accurate definition. A colony is an off-shoot 



414 American Essays 

from a parent stock, and its chief characteristic is depend- 
ence. In exact proportion as dependence lessens, the colony 
changes its nature and advances toward national existence. 
For a hundred and fifty years we were English colonies. 
Just before the revolution, in everything but the affairs of 
practical government, the precise point at which the break 
came, we were still colonies in the fullest sense of the term. 
Except in matters of food and drink, and of the wealth 
which we won from the soil and the ocean, we were in a 
state of complete material and intellectual dependence. 
Every luxury, and almost every manufactured article, came 
to us across the water. Our politics, except those which 
were purely local, were the politics of England, and so also 
were our foreign relations. Our books, our art, our authors, 
our commerce, were all English; and this was true of our 
colleges, our professions, our learning, our fashions, and our 
manners. There is no need here to go into the details which 
show the absolute supremacy of the colonial spirit and our 
entire intellectual dependence. When we sought to origi- 
nate, we simply imitated. The conditions of our life could 
not be overcome. 

The universal prevalence of the colonial spirit at that 
period is shown most strongly by one great exception, just 
as the flash of lightning makes us realize the intense dark- 
ness of a thunder-storm at night. In the midst of the 
provincial and barren waste of our intellectual existence 
in the eighteenth century there stands out in sharp relief 
the luminous genius of Franklin. It is true that Franklin 
was cosmopolitan in thought, that his name and fame and 
achievements in science and literature belonged to man- 
kind; but he was all this because he was genuinely and 
intensely American. His audacity, his fertility, his adapta- 
bility, are all characteristic of America, and not of an Eng- 
lish colony. He moved with an easy and assured step, 



Colonialism m the United States 415 

with a poise and balance which nothing could shake, among 
the great men of the world; he stood before kings and 
princes and courtiers, unmoved and unawed. He was 
strongly averse to breaking with England ; but when the 
war came he was the one man who could go forth and repre- 
sent to Europe the new nationality without a touch of the 
colonist about him. He met them all, great ministers and 
great sovereigns, on a common ground, as if the colonies 
of yesterday had been an independent nation for genera- 
tions. His autobiography is the corner-stone, the first great 
work of American literature. The plain, direct style, al- 
most worthy of Swift, the homely, forcible language, the 
humor, the observation, the knowledge of men, the worldly 
philosophy of that remarkable book, are familiar to all ; 
but its best and, considering its date, its most extraordinary 
quality is its perfect originality. It is American in feeling, 
without any taint of English colonialism. Look at Franklin 
in the midst of that excellent Pennsylvania community; 
compare him and his genius with his surroundings, and you 
get a better idea of what the colonial spirit was in America 
in those days, and how thoroughly men were saturated with 
it, than in any other way. 

In general terms it may be said that, outside of politics 
and the still latent democratic tendencies, the entire intel- 
lectual life of the colonists was drawn from England, and 
that to the mother country they looked for everything per- 
taining to the domain of thought. The colonists in the 
eighteenth century had, in a word, a thoroughly and deeply 
rooted habit of mental dependence. The manner in which 
we have gradually shaken off this dependence, retaining 
of the past only that which is good, constitutes the history 
of the decline of the colonial spirit in the United .States. 
As this spirit existed everywhere at the outset, and brooded 
over the whole realm of intellect, we can in most cases trace 



4i6 American Essays 

its history best in the recurring and successful revolts against 
it, which, breaking out now here, now there, have at last 
brought it so near to final extinction. 

In 1789, after the seven years of disorder and demorali- 
zation which followed the close of the war, the United 
States government was established. Every visible political 
tie which bound us to England had been severed, and we 
were apparently entirely independent. But the shackles of 
the colonial spirit, which had been forging and welding for 
a century and a half, were still heavy upon us, and fettered 
all our mental action. The work of making our independ- 
ence real and genuine was but half done, and the first 
struggle of the new national spirit with that of the colonial 
past was in the field of politics, and consumed twenty-five 
years before victory was finally obtained. We still felt that 
our fortunes were inextricably interwoven with those of 
Europe. We could not realize that what affected us nearly 
when we were a part of the British Empire no longer 
touched us as an independent nation. We can best under- 
stand how strong this feeling was by the effect which was 
produced here by the French revolution. That tremendous 
convulsion, it may be said, was necessarily felt everywhere ; 
but one much greater might take place in Europe to-day 
without producing here anything at all resembling the ex- 
citement of 1790. We had already achieved far more than 
the French revolution ever accomplished. • We had gone 
much farther on the democratic road than any other nation. 
Yet worthy men in the United States put on cockades and 
liberty caps, erected trees of liberty, called each other " Citi- 
zen Brown " and " Citizen Smith," drank confusion to 
tyrants, and sang the wild songs of Paris. All this was done 
in a country where every privilege and artificial distinction 
had been swept away, and where the government was the 
creation of the people themselves. These ravings and sym- 



Colonialism in the United States 417 

bols had a terrific reality in Paris and in Europe, and so, 
like colonists, we felt that they must have a meaning to us, 
and that the fate and fortunes of our ally were our fate 
and fortunes. A part of the people engaged in an imitation 
that became here the shallowest nonsense, while the other 
portion of the community, which was hostile to French ideas, 
took up and propagated the notion that the welfare of 
civilized society lay with England and with English opinions. 
Thus we had two great parties in the United States, working 
themselves up to white heat over the politics of England 
and France. The first heavy blow to the influence of foreign 
politics was Washington's proclamation of neutrality. It 
seems a very simple and obvious thing now, this policy 
of non-interference in the affairs of Europe which that 
proclamation inaugurated, and yet at the time men marveled 
at the step, and thought it very strange. Parties divided 
over it. People could not conceive how we could keep clear 
of the great stream of European events. One side disliked 
the proclamation as hostile to France, while the other ap- 
proved it for the same reason. Even the Secretary of State, 
Thomas Jefferson, one of the most representative men of 
American democracy, resisted the neutrality policy in the 
genuine spirit of the colonist. Yet Washington's proclama- 
tion was simply the sequel. to the Declaration of Independ- 
ence. It merely amounted to saying: We have created a 
new nation, and England not only cannot govern us, but 
English and European politics are none of our business, and 
we propose to be independent of them and not meddle in 
them. The neutrality policy of Washington's administration 
was a great advance toward independence and a severe blow 
to colonialism in politics. Washington himself exerted a 
powerful influence against the colonial spirit. The principle 
of nationality, then just entering upon its long struggle with 
state's rights, was in its very nature hostile to everything 



4i8 American Essays 

colonial ; and Washington, despite his Virginian traditions, 
was thoroughly imbued with the national spirit. He believed 
himself, and insensibly impressed his belief upon the peo- 
ple, that true nationality could only be obtained by keeping 
ourselves aloof from the conflicts and the politics of the 
Old World. Then, too, his splendid personal dignity, which 
still holds us silent and respectful after the lapse of a hun- 
dred years, communicated itself to his office, and thence to 
the nation of which he was the representative. The colonial 
spirit withered away in the presence of Washington. 

The only thorough-going nationalist among the leaders of 
that time was Alexander Hamilton. He was not born in 
the States, and was therefore free from all local influences ; 
and he was by nature imperious in temper and imperial in 
his views. The guiding principle of that great man's public 
career was the advancement of American nationality. He 
was called '* British " Hamilton by the very men who wished 
to throw us into the arms of the French republic, because 
he was wedded to the principles and the forms of consti- 
tutional English government and sought to preserve them 
here adapted to new conditions. He desired to put our 
political inheritance to its proper use, but this was as far 
removed from the colonial spirit as possible. Instead of 
being '' British," Hamilton's intense eagerness for a strong 
national government made him the deadliest foe of the 
colonial spirit, which he did more to strangle and crush out 
than any other man of his time. The objects at which he 
aimed were continental supremacy, and complete independ- 
ence in business, politics, and industry. In all these depart- 
ments he saw the belittling effects of dependence, and so he 
assailed it by his reports and by his whole policy, foreign 
and domestic. So much of his work as he carried through 
had a far-reaching efifect, and did a great deal to weaken 
the colonial spirit. But the strength of that spirit was best 



Colonialism in the United States 419 

shown in the hostility or indifference which was displayed 
toward his projects. The great cause of opposition to Ham- 
ilton's financial policy proceeded, undoubtedly, from state 
jealousy of the central government ; but the resistance to 
his foreign policy arose from the colonial ignorance which 
could not understand the real purpose of neutrality, and 
which thought that Hamilton was simply and stupidly en- 
deavoring to force us toward England as against France. 

Washington, Hamilton, and John Adams, notwithstanding 
his New England prejudices, all did much while they were 
in power, as the heads of the Federalist party, to cherish 
and increase national self-respect, and thereby eradicate 
colonialism from our politics. The lull in Europe, after 
the fall of the Federalists, led to a truce in the contests over 
foreign affairs in the United States, but with the renewal 
of war the old conflict broke out. The years from 1806 
to 1812 are among the least creditable in our history. The 
Federalists ceased to be a national party and the fierce reac- 
tion against the French revolution drove them into an un- 
reasoning admiration of England. They looked to England 
for the salvation of civilized society. Their chief interest 
centered in English politics, and the resources of England 
formed the subject of their thoughts and studies, and fur- 
nished the theme of conversation at their dinner tables. It 
was just as bad on the other side. The Republicans still 
clung to their affection for France, notwithstanding the 
despotism of the empire. They regarded Napoleon with 
reverential awe, and shivered at the idea of plunging into 
hostilities with anyone. The foreign policy of Jefferson 
was that of a thorough colonist. He shrank with horror 
from war. He would have had us confine ourselves to agri- 
culture, and to our flocks and herds, because our commerce, 
the commerce of a nation, was something with which other 
powers were likely to interfere. He wished us to exist in 



420 American Essays 

a state of complete commercial and industrial dependence, 
and allow England to carry for us and manufacture for us, 
as she did when we were colonies weighed down by the 
clauses of the navigation acts. His plans of resistance did 
not extend beyond the old colonial scheme of non-importa- 
tion and non-intercourse agreements. Read the bitter 
debates in Congress of those years, and you find them filled 
with nothing but the politics of other nations. All the talk 
is saturated with colonial feeling. Even the names of op- 
probrium which the hostile parties applied to each other 
were borrowed. The Republicans called the Federalists 
" Tories " and a *' British faction," while the Federalists 
retorted by stigmatizing their opponents as Jacobins. Dur- 
ing these sorry years, however, the last in which our poli- 
tics bore the colonial character, a new party was growing 
up, which may be called the national party, not as distin- 
guished from the party of state's rights, but as the opposition 
to colonial ideas. This new movement was headed and 
rendered illustrious by such men as Henry Clay, John 
Quincy Adams, the brilliant group from South Carolina, com- 
prising Calhoun, Langdon Cheves, and William Lowndes, 
and at a later period by Daniel Webster. Clay and 
the South Carolinians were the first to push forward the 
resistance to colonialism. Their policy was crude and ill- 
defined. They struck out blindly against the evil influence 
which, as they felt, was choking the current of national life, 
for they were convinced that, to be truly independent, the 
United States must fight somebody. Who that somebody 
should be was a secondary question. Of all the nations 
which had been kicking and cuffing us, England was, on 
the whole, the most arrogant, and offensive; and so the 
young nationalists dragged the country into the war of 1812. 
We were wonderfully successful at sea and at New Orleans, 
but in other respects this war was neither very prosperous 



Colonialism in the United States 421 

nor very creditable, and the treaty of Ghent was absokitely 
silent as to the objects for which we had expressly declared 
war. Nevertheless, the real purpose of the war was gained, 
despite the silent and almost meaningless treaty which con- 
cluded it. We had proved to the world and to ourselves 
that we existed as a nation. We had demonstrated the fact 
that we had ceased to be colonies. We had torn up colonial- 
ism in our public affairs by the roots, and we had crushed 
out the colonial spirit in our politics. After the war of 1812 
our politics might be good, bad, or indifferent, but they were 
our own politics, and not those of Europe. The wretched 
colonial spirit which had belittled and warped them for 
twenty-five years had perished utterly, and with the treaty 
of Ghent it was buried so deeply that not even its ghost has 
since then crossed our political pathway. 

Besides being the field where the first battle with the 
colonial spirit was fought out, politics then offered almost 
the only intellectual interest of the country, outside of com- 
merce, which was still largely dependent in character, and 
very different in its scope from the great mercantile com- 
binations of to-day. Religious controversy was of the past, 
and except in New England, where the liberal revolt against 
Calvinism was in progress, there was no great interest in 
theological questions. When the Constitution went into 
operation the professions of law and medicine were in their 
infancy. There was no literature, no art, no science, none 
of the multifarious interests which now divide and absorb 
the intellectual energies of the community. In the quarter 
of a century which closed with the treaty of Ghent we can 
trace the development of the legal and medical professions, 
and their advance towards independence and originality. 
But in the literary efforts of the time we see the colonial 
spirit displayed more strongly than anywhere else, and in 
apparently undiminished vigor. 



422 American Essays 

Our first literature was political, and sprang from the 
discussions incident to the adoption of the Constitution. It 
was, however, devoted to our own affairs, and aimed at 
the foundation of a nation, and was therefore fresh, vigor- 
ous, often learned, and thoroughly American in tone. Its 
masterpiece was the Federalist, which marks an era in the 
history of constitutional discussion, and which was the 
conception of the thoroughly national mind of Hamilton. 
After the new government was established, our political 
writings, like our politics, drifted back to provincialism 
of thought, and were absorbed in the affairs of Europe ; but 
the first advance on the road to literary independence was 
made by the early literature of the Constitution. 

It is to this period also, which covers the years from 
1789 to 181 5, that Washington Irving, the first of our great 
writers, belongs. This is not the place to enter into an 
analysis of Irving's genius, but it may be fairly said that 
while in feeling he was a thorough American, in literature 
he was a cosmopolitan. His easy style, the tinge of romance, 
and the mingling of the story-teller and the antiquarian 
remind us of his great contemporary, Walter Scott. In his 
quiet humor and gentle satire, we taste the flavor of Addi- 
son. In the charming legends with which he has consecrated 
the beauties of the Hudson River valley, and thrown over 
that beautiful region the warm light of his imagination, we 
find the genuine love of country and of home. In like 
manner we perceive his historical taste and his patriotism 
in the last work of his life, the biography of his great name- 
sake. But he wrought as well with the romance of Spain 
and of England. He was too great to be colonial ; he did 
not find enough food for his imagination in the America of 
that day to be thoroughly American. He stands apart, 
a notable gift from America to English literature, but not 
a type of American literature itself. He had imitators and 



Colonialism in the United States 423 

friends, whom it has been, the fashion to call a school, but 
he founded no school, and died as he had lived, alone. He 
broke through the narrow trammels of colonialism himself, 
but the colonial spirit hung just as heavily upon the feeble 
literature about him. In those years also came the first 
poem of William CuUen Bryant, the first American poem 
with the quahty of life and which was native and not of 
imported origin. 

In that same period too there flourished another literary 
man, who was far removed in every way from the brilliant 
editor of Diedrich Knickerbocker, but who illustrated by his 
struggle with colonialism the strength of that influence far 
better than Irving, who soared so easily above it. Noah 
Webster, poor, sturdy, independent, with a rude but sur- 
prising knowledge of philology, revolted in every nerve 
and fiber of his being against the enervating influence of 
the colonial past. The spirit of nationality had entered into 
his soul. He felt that the nation which he saw growing 
up about him was too great to take its orthography or its 
pronunciation blindly and obediently from the mother land. 
It was a new country and a new nation, and Webster de- 
termined that so far as in him lay it should have linguistic 
independence. It was an odd idea, but it came from his 
heart, and his national feeling found natural expression in 
the study of language, to which he devoted his life. He 
went into open rebellion against British tradition. He was 
snubbed, laughed at, and abused. He was regarded as little 
better than a madman to dare to set himself up against 
Johnson and his successors. But the hard-headed New 
Englander pressed on, and finally brought out his dictionary, 
— a great work, which has fitly preserved his name. His 
knowledge was crude, his general theory mistaken ; his 
system of changes has not stood the test of time, and was 
in itself contradictory; but the stubborn battle which he 



424 American Essays 

fought for literary independence and the hard blows he 
struck should never be forgotten, while the odds against 
which he contended and the opposition he aroused are 
admirable illustrations of the overpowering influence of the 
colonial spirit in our early literature. 

What the state of our literature was, what the feelings 
of our few literary men apart from these few exceptions, 
and what the spirit with which Webster did battle, all come 
out in a few lines written by an English poet. We can see 
everything as by a sudden flash of light, and we do not 
need to look farther to understand the condition of Ameri- 
can literature in the early years of the century. In the 
waste of barbarism called the United States, the only oasis 
discovered by the delicate sensibilities of Mr. Thomas Moore 
was in the society of Mr. Joseph Dennie, a clever editor 
and essayist, and his little circle of friends in Philadelphia. 
The lines commonly quoted in this connection are those in 
the epistle to Spencer, beginning, — 

" Yet, yet, forgive me, O ye sacred few, 
Whom late by Delaware's green banks I knew;" 

which describe the poet's feelings toward America, and his 
delight in the society of Mr. Dennie and his friends. But 
the feelings and opinions of Moore are of no moment. The 
really important passage describes not the author, but what 
Dennie and his companions said and thought, and has in 
this way historical if not poetic value. The lines occur 
among those addressed to the " Boston frigate " when the 
author was leaving Halifax: — 

" Farewell to the few I have left with regret ; 
May they sometimes recall, what I cannot forget, 
The delight of those evenings, — too brief a delight, 
When in converse and song we have stol'n on the night ; 
When they've asked me the manners, the mind, or the mien, 
Of some bard I had known or some chief I had seen, 



Colonialism in" the United States 425 

Whose glory, though distant, they long had adored, 
Whose name had oft hallowed the wine-cup they .poured. 
And still, as with sympathy humble but true 
I have told of each bright son of fame all I knew. 
They have listened, and sighed that the powerful stream 
Of America's empire should pass like a dream, 
Without leaving one relic of genius, to say 
How sublime was the tide which had vanished away ! " 

The evils apprehended by these excellent gentlemen are 
much more strongly set forth in the previous epistle, but 
here we catch sight of the men themselves. There they 
sit adoring Englishmen, and eagerly inquiring about them 
of the gracious Mr. Moore, while they are dolefully sighing 
that the empire of America is to pass away and leave no 
relic of genius. In their small way they were doing what 
they could toward such a consummation. It may be said 
that this frame of mind was perfectly natural under the 
circumstances; but it is not to the purpose to inquire into 
causes and motives; it is enough to state the fact. Here 
was a set of men of more than average talents and educa- 
tion; not men of real talent and quality, like Irving, but 
clever men, forming one of the two or three small groups 
of literary persons in the United States. They come before 
us as true provincials, steeped to the eyes in colonialism, 
and they fairly represent the condition of American litera- 
ture at that time. They were slaves to the colonial spirit, 
which bowed before England and Europe. They have not 
left a name or a line which is remembered or read, except 
to serve as a historical illustration, and they will ulti- 
mately find their fit resting-place in the foot-notes of the 
historian. 

With the close of the English war the United States 
entered upon the second stage of their development. The 
new era, which began In 181 5, lasted until 1861. It was a 
period of growth, not simply in the direction of a vast mate- 



426 American Essays 

rial prosperity and a rapidly increasing population, but in 
national sentiment, which made itself felt everywhere. 
Wherever we turn during those years, we discover a steady 
decline of the colonial influence. Politics had become wholly 
national and independent. The law was illustrated by great 
names, which take high rank in the annals of English juris- 
prudence. Medicine began to have its schools, and to show 
practitioners who no longer looked across the sea for inspi- 
ration. The Monroe doctrine bore witness to the strong 
foreign policy of an independent people. The tariff gave 
evidence of the eager desire for industrial independence, 
which found practical expression in the fast-growing native 
manufactures. Internal improvements were a sign of the 
general faith and interest in the development of the na- 
tional resources. The rapid multiplication of inventions 
resulted from the natural genius of America in that im- 
portant field, where it took almost at once a leading place. 
Science began to have a home at our seats of learning, 
and in the land of Franklin found a congenial soil. 

But the colonial spirit, cast out from our politics and fast 
disappearing from business and the professions, still clung 
closely to literature, which must always be the best and last 
expression of a national mode of thought. In the admirable 
Life of Cooper, recently published, by Professor Lounsbury, 
the condition of our literature in 1820 is described so vividly 
and so exactly that it cannot be improved. It is as fol- 
lows : — 

*' The intellectual dependence of America upon England 
at that period is something that it is now hard to under- 
stand. Political supremacy had been cast off, but the su- 
premacy of opinion remained absolutely unshaken. Of 
creative literature there was then very little of any value 
produced; and to that little a foreign stamp was necessary, 
to give currency outside of the petty circle in which it 



Colonialism in the United States 427 

originated. There was slight encouragement for the author 
to write ; there was still less for the publisher to print. It 
was, indeed, a positive injury, ordinarily, to the commercial 
credit of a bookseller to bring out a volume of poetry or of 
prose fiction which had been written by an American; for 
it was almost certain to fail to pay expenses. A sort of 
critical literature was struggling, or rather gasping, for a 
life that was hardly worth living; for its most marked char- 
acteristic was its servile deference to English judgment and 
dread of English censure. It requires a painful and peni- 
tential examination of the reviews of the period to compre- 
hend the utter abasement of mind with which the men of 
that day accepted the foreign estimate upon works written 
here, which had been read by themselves, but which it was 
clear had not been read by the critics whose opinions they 
echoed. Even the meekness with which they submitted to 
the most depreciatory estimate of themselves was outdone 
by the anxiety with which they hurried to assure the world 
that they, the most cultivated of the American race, did 
not presume to have so high an opinion of the writings of 
some one of their countrymen as had been expressed by 
enthusiasts, whose patriotism had proved too much for 
their discernment. Never was any class so eager to free 
itself from charges that imputed to it the presumption of 
holding independent views of its own. Out of the intel- 
lectual character of many of those who at that day pre- 
tended to be the representatives of the highest education 
in this country, it almost seemed that the element of man- 
liness had been wholly eliminated; and that, along with its 
sturdy democracy, whom no obstacles thwarted and no 
dangers daunted, the New World was also to give birth to 
a race of literary cowards and parasites." 

The case is vigorously stated, but is not at all over- 
charged. Far stronger, indeed, than Professor Lounsbury's 



428 American Essays 

statement is the commentary furnished by Cooper's first 
book. This novel, now utterly forgotten, was entitled Pre- 
caution. Its scene was laid wholly in England; its char- 
acters were drawn from English society, chiefly from the 
aristocracy of that favored land; its conventional phrases 
were all English; worst and most extraordinary of all, it 
professed to be by an EngUsh author, and was received on 
that theory without suspicion. In such a guise did the 
most popular of American novelists and one of the most 
eminent among modern writers of fiction first appear before 
his countrymen and the world. If this were not so pitiable, 
it would be utterly ludicrous and yet the most melancholy 
feature of the case is that Cooper was not in the least to 
blame, and no one found fault with him, for his action 
was regarded by everyone as a matter of course. In other 
words, the first step of an American entering upon a lit- 
erary career was to pretend to be an Englishman, in order 
that he might win the approval, not of Englishmen, but 
of his own countrymen. 

If this preposterous state of public opinion had been a 
mere passing fashion it would hardly be worth recording. 
But it represented a fixed and settled habit of mind, and 
is only one example of a long series of similar phenomena. 
We look back to the years preceding the revolution, and 
there we find this mental condition flourishing and strong. 
At that time it hardly calls for comment, because it was so 
perfectly natural. It is when we find such opinions existing 
in the year 1820 that we are conscious of their significance. 
They belong to colonists, and yet they are uttered by the 
citizens of a great and independent state. The sorriest part 
of it is that these views were chiefly held by the best edu- 
cated portion of the community. The great body of the 
American people, who had cast out the colonial spirit from 
their politics and their business, and were fast destroying 



Colonialism m the United States 429 

it in the professions, was sound and true. The parasitic 
literature of that day makes the boastful and rhetorical 
patriotism then in the exuberance of youth seem actually 
noble and fine, because, with all its faults, it was honest, 
genuine, and inspired by a real love of country. 

Yet it was during this period, between the years 181 5 and 
1861, that we began to have a literature of our own, and one 
in which any people could take a just pride. Cooper him- 
self was the pioneer. In his second novel. The Spy, he threw 
off the wretched spirit of the colonist, and the story, which 
at once gained a popularity that broke down all barriers, 
was read everywhere with delight and approbation. The 
chief cause of the difference between the fate of this novel 
and that of its predecessor lies in the fact that The Spy was 
of genuine native origin. Cooper knew and loved American 
scenery and life. He understood certain phases of Ameri- 
can character on the prairie and the ocean, and his genius 
was no longer smothered by the dead colonialism of the 
past. The Spy, and those of Cooper's novels which belong 
to the same class, have lived and will live, and certain 
American characters which he drew will likewise endure. 
He might have struggled all his life in the limbo of intel- 
lectual servitude to which Moore's friends consigned them- 
selves, and no one would have cared for him then or re- 
membered him now. But, with all his foibles, Cooper was 
inspired by an intense patriotism, and he had a bold, vigor- 
ous, aggressive nature. He freed his talents at a stroke, 
and giving them full play attained at once a world-wide 
reputation, which no man of colonial mind could ever have 
dreamed of reaching. Yet his countrymen, long before his 
days of strife and unpopularity, seem to have taken singu- 
larly little patriotic pride in his achievements, and the well 
bred and well educated shuddered to hear him called the 
" American Scott " ; not because they thought this truly 



430 American Essays 

colonial description inappropriate and misapplied, but be- 
cause it was a piece of irreverent audacity toward a great 
light of English literature. 

Cooper was the first, after the close of the war of 1812, 
to cast off the colonial spirit and take up his position as 
a representative of genuine American literature ; but he soon 
had companions, who carried still higher the standard which 
he had raised. To this period, which closed with our civil 
war, belong many of the names which are to-day among 
those most cherished by English-speaking people every- 
where. We see the national spirit in Longfellow turning 
from the themes of the Old World to those of the New. 
In the beautiful creations of the sensitive and delicate imagi- 
nation of Hawthorne, there was a new tone and a rich 
originality, and the same influence may be detected in the 
remarkable poems and the wild fancies of Poe. We find a 
like native strength in the sparkling verses of Holmes, in 
the pure and gentle poetry of Whittier, and in the firm, 
vigorous work of Lowell. A new leader of independent 
thought arises in Emerson, destined to achieve a world- 
wide reputation. A new school of historians appears, 
adorned by the talents of Prescott, Bancroft, and Motley. 
Many of these distinguished men were far removed in point 
of time from the beginning of the new era, but they all 
belonged to and were the result of the national movement, 
which began its onward march as soon as we had shaken 
ourselves clear from the influence of the colonial spirit upon 
our public affairs by the struggle which culminated in 
" Madison's war," as the Federalists loved to call it. 

These successes in the various departments of intellectual 
activity were all due to an instinctive revolt against colonial- 
ism. But, nevertheless, the old and time-worn spirit which 
made Cooper pretend to be an Englishman in 1820 was very 
strong, and continued to impede our progress toward intel- 



Colonialism in the United States 431 

lectual independence. We find it clinging to the lesser 
and weaker forms of literature. We see it in fashion and 
society and in habits of thought, but we find the best proof 
of its vitality in our sensitiveness to foreign opinion. This 
was a universal failing. The body of the people showed 
it by bitter resentment; the cultivated and highly educated 
by abject submission and deprecation, or by cries of 
pain. 

As was natural in a very young nation, just awakened 
to its future destiny, just conscious of its still undeveloped 
strength, there was at this time a vast amount of exuberant 
self-satisfaction, of cheap rhetoric, and of noisy self-glorifi- 
cation. There was a corresponding readiness to take offense 
at the unfavorable opinion of outsiders, and at the same 
time an eager and insatiable curiosity to hear foreign 
opinions of any kind. We were, of course, very open to 
satire and attack. We were young, undeveloped, with a 
crude, almost raw civilization, and a great inclination to 
be boastful and conceited. Our EngHsh cousins, who had 
failed to conquer us, bore us no good will, and were quite 
ready to take all the revenge which books of travel and 
criticism could afford. It is to these years that Marryat, 
Trollope, Hamilton, Dickens, and a host of others belong. 
Most of their productions are quite forgotten now. The 
only ones which are Still read, probably, are the American 
Notes and Martin Chuzdezvit: the former preserved by the 
fame of the author, the latter by its own merit as a novel. 
There was abundant truth in what Dickens said, to take 
the great novelist as the type of this group of foreign critics. 
It was an age in which Elijah Pogram and Jefferson Brick 
flourished rankly. It is also true that all that Dickens 
wrote was poisoned by his utter ingratitude, and that to 
describe the United States as populated by nothing but 
Bricks and Pograms was one-sided and malicious, and not 



432 American Essays 

true to facts. But the truth or the falsehood, the value or 
the worthlessness, of these criticisms are not of importance 
now. The striking fact, and the one we are in search of, 
is the manner in which we bore these censures when they 
appeared. We can appreciate contemporary feeling at that 
time only by delving in much forgotten literature ; and even 
then we can hardly comprehend fully what we find, so com- 
pletely has our habit of mind altered since those days. We 
received these strictures with a howl of anguish and a 
scream of mortified vanity. We winced and writhed, and 
were almost ready to go to war, because English travelers 
and writers abused us. It is usual now to refer these 
ebullitions of feeling to our youth, probably from analogy 
with the youth of an individual. But the analogy is mis- 
leading. Sensitiveness to foreign opinion is not especially 
characteristic of a youthful nation, or, at least, we have 
no cases to prove it, and in the absence of proof the theory 
falls. On the other hand, this excessive and almost morbid 
sensibility is a characteristic of provincial, colonial, or de- 
pendent states, especially in regard to the mother country. 
We raged and cried out against adverse English criticism, 
whether it was true or false, just or unjust, and we paid 
it this unnatural attention because the spirit of the colonist 
still lurked in our hearts and affected our mode of thought. 
We were advancing fast on the road to intellectual and moral 
independence, but we were still far from the goal. 

This second period in our history closed, as has been said, 
with the struggle generated by a great moral question, which 
finally absorbed all the thoughts and passions of the people, 
and culminated in a terrible civil war. We fought to pre- 
serve the integrity of the Union ; we fought for our national 
life, and nationality prevailed. The magnitude of the con- 
flict, the dreadful suffering which it caused for the sake 
of principle, the uprising of a great people, elevated and 



Colonialism in the United States 433 

ennobled the whole country. The flood-gates were opened, 
and the tremendous tide of national feeling swept away 
every meaner emotion. We came out of the battle, after 
an experience which brought a sudden maturity with it, 
stronger than ever, but much graver and soberer than before. 
We came out self-poised and self-reliant, with a true sense 
of dignity and of our national greatness, which years of 
peaceful development could not have given us. The sensi- 
tiveness to foreign opinion which had been the marked 
feature of our mental condition before the war had disap- 
peared. It had vanished in the smoke of battle, as the 
colonial spirit disappeared from our politics in the war of 
1812. Englishmen -and Frenchmen have come and gone, and 
written their impressions of us, and made little splashes 
in the current of every-day topics, and have been forgotten. 
Just now it is the fashion for every Englishman who visits 
this country, particularly if he is a man of any note, to go 
home and tell the world what he thinks of us. Some of 
these writers do this without taking the trouble to come here 
first. Sometimes we read what they have to say out of 
curiosity. We accept what is true, whether unpalatable or 
not, philosophically, and smile at what is false. The gen- 
eral feeling is one of wholesome indifference. We no longer 
see salvation and happiness in favorable foreign opinion, 
or misery in the reverse. The colonial spirit in this direc- 
tion also is practically extinct. 

But while this is true of the mass of the American people 
whose mental health is good, and is also true of the great 
body of sound public opinion in the United States, it has 
some marked exceptions ; and these exceptions constitute 
the lingering remains of the colonial spirit, which survives, 
and shows itself here and there even at the present day, 
with a strange vitality. 

In the years which followed the close of the war, it seemed 



434 American Essays 

as if colonialism had been utterly extinguished : but, un- 
fortunately, this was not the case. The multiplication of 
great fortunes, the growth of a class rich by inheritance, 
and the improvement in methods of travel and communi- 
cation, all tended to carry large numbers of Americans to 
Europe. The luxurious fancies which were born of in- 
creased wealth, and the intellectual tastes which were 
developed by the advance of the higher education, and to 
which an old civilization offers peculiar advantages and 
attractions, combined to breed in many persons a love of 
foreign life and foreign manners. These tendencies and 
opportunities have revived the dying spirit of colonialism. 
We see it most strongly in the leisure class, which is gradu- 
ally increasing in this country. During the miserable as- 
cendancy of the Second Empire, a band of these persons 
formed what was known as the " American colony," in 
Paris. Perhaps they still exist ; if so, their existence is now 
less flagrant and more decent. When they were notorious 
they presented the melancholy spectacle of Americans ad- 
miring and aping the manners, habits, and vices of another 
nation, when that nation was bent and corrupted by the 
cheap, meretricious, and rotten system of the third Na- 
poleon. They furnished a very offensive example of pecu- 
liarly mean colonialism. This particular phase has departed, 
but the same sort of Americans are, unfortunately, still 
common in Europe. I do not mean, of course, those persons 
who go abroad to buy social consideration, nor the women 
who trade on their beauty or their wits to gain a brief and 
dishonoring notoriety. These last are merely adventurers 
and adventuresses, who are common to all nations. The 
people referred to here form that large class, comprising 
many excellent men and women, no doubt, who pass their 
lives in Europe, mourning over the inferiority of their own 
country, and who become thoroughly denationalized. They 



Colonialism in the United States 435 

do not change into Frenchmen or Englishmen, but are 
simply disfigured and deformed Americans. 

We find the same wretched habit of thought in certain 
groups among the rich and idle people of our great eastern 
cities, especially in New York, because it is the metropolis. 
These groups are for the most part made up of young men 
who despise everything American and admire everything 
English. They talk and dress and walk and ride in certain 
ways, because they imagine that the English do these things 
after that fashion. They hold their own country in contempt, 
and lament the hard fate of their birth. They try to think 
that they form an aristocracy, and become at once ludicrous 
and despicable. The virtues which have made the upper 
classes in England what they are, and which take them 
into public afifairs, into literature and politics, are forgotten, 
for Anglo-Americans imitate the vices or the follies of their 
models, and stop there. If all this were merely a fleeting 
fashion, an attack of Anglo-mania or of Gallo-mania, of 
which there have been instances enough everywhere, it 
would be oi no consequence. But it is a recurrence of the 
old and deep-seated malady of colonialism. It is a lineal 
descendant of the old colonial family. The features are 
somewhat dim now, and the vitality is low, but there is no 
mistaking the hereditary traits. The people who thus de- 
spise their own land, and ape English manners, flatter 
themselves with being cosmopolitans, when in truth 
they are genuine colonists, petty and provincial to the last 
degree. 

We see a like tendency in the same limited but marked 
way in our literature. Some of our cleverest fiction is 
largely devoted to studying the character of our country- 
men abroad ; that is, either denationalized Americans or 
Americans with a foreign background. At times this species 
of literature resolves itself into an agonized effort to show 



43^ American Essays 

how foreigners regard us, and to point out the defects which 
jar upon foreign susceptibiUties even while it satirizes the 
denationalized American. The endeavor to turn ourselves 
inside out in order to appreciate the trivialities of life which 
impress foreigners unpleasantly is very unprofitable exer- 
tion, and the Europeanized American is not worth either 
study or satire. Writings of this kind, again, are intended 
to be cosmopolitan in tone, and to evince a knowledge of 
the world, and yet they are in reality steeped in colonialism. 
We cannot but regret the influence of a spirit which wastes 
fine powers of mind and keen perceptions in a fruitless striv- 
ing and a morbid craving to know how we appear to 
foreigners, and to show what they think of us. 

We see, also, men and women of talent going abroad to 
study art and remaining there. The atmosphere of Europe 
is more congenial to such pursuits, and the struggle as noth- 
ing to what must be encountered here. But when it leads 
to an abandonment of America, the result is wholly vain. 
Sometimes these people become tolerably successful French 
artists, but their nationality and individuality have departed, 
and with them originality and force. The admirable school 
of etching which has arisen in New York ; the beautiful work 
of American wood-engraving; the Chelsea tiles of Low, 
which have won the highest prizes at English exhibitions; 
the silver of Tiffany, specimens of which were bought by the 
Japanese commissioners at the Paris Exposition, are all 
strong, genuine work, and are doing more for American 
art, and for all art, than a wilderness of over-educated and 
denationalized Americans who are painting pictures and 
carving statues and writing music in Europe or in the 
United States, in the spirit of colonists, and bowed down 
by a wretched dependence. 

There is abundance of splendid material all about us 
here for the poet, the artist, or the novelist. The condi- 



Colonialism in the United States 437 

tlons are not the same as in Europe, but they are not on 
that account inferior. They are certainly as good. They 
may be better. Our business is not to grumble because 
they are different, for that is colonial. We must adapt our- 
selves to them, for we alone can use properly our own 
resources ; and no work in art or literature ever has been, 
or ever will be, of any real or lasting value which is not 
true, original, and independent. 

If these remnants of the colonial spirit and influence were, 
as they look at first sight, merely trivial accidents, they 
would not be worth mentioning. But the range of their 
influence, although limited, affects an important class. It 
appears almost wholly among the rich or the highly edu- 
cated in art and literature ; that is, to a large extent among 
men and women of talent and refined sensibilities. The 
follies of those who imitate English habits belong really to 
but a small portion of even their own class. But as these 
follies are contemptible, the wholesome prejudice which 
they excite is naturally, but thoughtlessly, extended to all 
who have anything in common with those who are guilty 
of them. In this busy country of ours, the men of leisure 
and education, although increasing in number, are still few, 
and they have heavier duties and responsibilities than any- 
where else. Public charities, public affairs, politics, litera- 
ture, all demand the energies of such men. To the country 
which has given them wealth and leisure and education they 
owe the duty of faithful service, because they, and they 
alone, can afford to do that work which must be done with- 
out pay. The few who are imbued with the colonial spirit 
not only fail in their duty, and become contemptible and 
absurd, but they injure the influence and thwart the activity 
of the great majority of those who are similarly situated, 
and who are also patriotic and public spirited. 

In art and literature the vain struggle to be somebody 



43^ American Essays 

or something other than an American, the senseless admira- 
tion of everything foreign, and the morbid anxiety about 
our appearance before foreigners have the same deadening 
effect. Such quaUties were bad enough in 1820. They are 
a thousand times meaner and more fooHsh now. They 
retard the march of true progress, which here, as elsewhere, 
must be in the direction of nationality and independence. 
This does not mean that we are to expect or to* seek for 
something utterly different, something new and strange, in 
art, literature, or society. Originality is thinking for one's 
self. Simply to think differently from other people is eccen- 
tricity. Some of our English cousins, for instance, have 
undertaken to hold Walt Whitman up as the herald of the 
coming literature of American democracy, not because he 
was a genius, not for his merits alone, but largely because he 
departed from all received forms, and indulged in bar- 
barous eccentricities. They mistake difference for originality. 
Whitman was a true and a great poet, but it was his power 
and imagination which made him so, not his eccentricities. 
When Whitman did best, he was, as a rule, nearest to the 
old and well-proved forms. We, like our contemporaries 
everywhere, are the heirs of the ages, and we must study 
the past, and learn from it, and advance from what has 
been already tried and found good. That is the only way 
to success anywhere, or in anything. But we cannot enter 
upon that or any other road until we are truly national and 
independent intellectually, and are ready to think for our- 
selves, and not look to foreigners in order to find out what 
they think. 

To those who grumble and sigh over the inferiority of 
America we may commend the opinion of a distinguished 
Englishman, as they prefer such authority. Mr. Herbert 
Spencer said, recently, " I think that whatever difficulties 
they may have to surmount, and whatever tribulations they 



Colonialism in the United States 439 

may have to pass through, the Americans may reasonably 
look forward to a time when they will have produced a 
civilization grander than any the world has known." Even 
the Englishmen whom our provincials of to-day adore, even 
those who are most hostile, pay a serious attention to 
America. That keen respect for success and anxious defer- 
ence to power so characteristic of Great Britain find expres- 
sion every day, more and more, in the English interest 
in the United States, now that we do not care in the least 
about it ; and be it said in passing, no people despises more 
heartily than the English a man who does not love his coun- 
try. To be despised abroad, and regarded with contempt 
and pity at home, is not a very lofty result of so much 
efifort on the part of our lovers of the British. But it is 
the natural and fit reward of colonialism. Members of a 
great nation instinctively patronize colonists. 

It is interesting to examine the sources of the colonial 
spirit, and to trace its influence upon our history and its 
gradual decline. The study of a habit of mind, with its 
tenacity of life, is an instructive and entertaining branch 
of history. But if we lay history and philosophy aside, 
the colonial spirit as it survives to-day, although curious 
enough, is a mean and noxious thing, which cannot be too 
quickly or too thoroughly stamped out. It is the dying spirit 
of dependence, and wherever it still clings it injures, weak- 
ens, and degrades. It should be exorcised rapidly and com- 
pletely, so that it will never return. I cannot close more fitly 
than with the noble words of Emerson : — 

'' Let the passion for America cast out the passion for 
Europe. They who find America insipid, they for whom 
London and Paris have spoiled their own homes, can be 
spared to return to those cities. I not only see a career 
at home for more genius than we have, but for more than 
there is in the world," 



NEW YORK AFTER PARIS 

W. C. Brownell 

No American, not a commercial or otherwise hardened 
traveler, can have a soul so dead as to be incapable of 
emotion when, on his return from a long trip abroad, he 
catches sight of the low-lying and insignificant Long Island 
coast. One's excitement begins, indeed, with the pilot-boat. 
The pilot-boat is the first concrete symbol of those native 
and normal relations with one's fellow-men, which one has 
so long observed in infinitely varied manifestation abroad, 
but always as a spectator and a stranger, and which one 
is now on the eve of sharing himself. As she comes up 
swiftly, white and graceful, drops her pilot, crosses the 
steamer's bows, tacks, and picks up her boat in the foaming 
wake, she presents a spectacle beside which the most pic- 
turesque Mediterranean craft, with colored sails and lazy 
evolutions, appear mistily in the memory as elements of a 
feeble and conventional ideal. The ununiformed pilot clam- 
bers on board, makes his way to the bridge, and takes com- 
mand with an equal lack of French manner and of English 
affectation distinctly palpable to the sense, sharpened by 
long absence into observing native characteristics as closely 
as foreign ones. If the season be right the afternoon is 
bright, the range of vision apparently limitless, the sky 
nearly cloudless and, by contrast with the European firma- 
ment, almost colorless, the July sun such as no Parisian or 
Londoner ever saw. The French reproach us for having no 
word for " patrie " as distinct from '' pays '' ; we have the 

440 



New York After Paris 441 

thing at all events, and cherish it, and it needs only the 
proximity of the foreigner, from whom in general we are 
so widely separated, to give our patriotism a tinge of the 
veriest chauvinism that exists in France itself. 

We fancy the feeling old-fashioned, and imagine ours 
to be the most cosmopolitan, the least prejudiced tempera- 
ment in the world. It is reasonable that it should be. The 
extreme sensitiveness noticed in us by all foreign observers 
during the antebellum epoch, and ascribed by Tocqueville 
to our self-distrust, is naturally inconsistent with our posi- 
tion and circumstances to-day. A population greater than 
that of any of the great nations, isolated by the most en- 
viable geographical felicity in the world from the narrowing 
influences of international jealousy apparent to every Ameri- 
can who travels in Europe, is increasingly less concerned 
at criticism than a struggling provincial republic of half 
its size. And along with our self-confidence and our care- 
lessness of *' abroad," it is only with the grosser element 
among us that national conceit has deepened ; in general, we 
are apt to fancy we have become cosmopolitan in proportion 
as we have lost our provincialism. With us surely the indi- 
vidual has not withered, and if the world has become more 
and more to him, it is because it is the world at large and 
not the pent-up confines of his own country's history and 
extent. " La patrie " in danger would be quickly enough 
rescued — there is no need to prove that over again, even 
to our own satisfaction ; but in general " la patrie " not being 
in any danger, being on the contrary apparently on the very 
crest of the wave of the world, it is felt not to need much 
of one's active consideration, and passively indeed is viewed 
by many people, probably, as a comfortable and gigantic 
contrivance for securing a free field in which the individual 
may expand and develop. '' America," says Emerson, 
'' America is Opportunity.'' After all, the average American 



442 American Essays 

of the present day says, a country stands or falls by the 
number of properly expanded and developed individuals it 
possesses. But the happening of any one of a dozen things 
unexpectedly betrays that all this cosmopolitanism is in great 
measure, and so far as sentiment is concerned, a veneer 
and a disguise. Such a happening is the very change from 
blue water to gray that announces to the returning Ameri- 
can the nearness of that country which he sometimes thinks 
he prizes more for what it stands for than for itself. It 
is not, he then feels with a sudden flood of emotion, that 
America is home, but that home is America. America 
comes suddenly to mean what it never meant before. 

Unhappily for this exaltation, ordinary life is not com- 
posed of emotional crises. It is ordinary life with a venge- 
ance which one encounters in issuing from the steamer dock 
and facing again his native city. Paris never looked so 
lovely, so exquisite to the sense as it now appears in the 
memory. All that Parisian regularity, order, decorum, 
and beauty into which, although a stranger, your own activi- 
ties fitted so perfectly that you were only half-conscious of 
its existence, was not, then, merely normal, wholly a matter 
of course. Emerging into West Street, amid the solicita- 
tions of hackmen, the tinkling jog-trot of the most ignoble 
horse-cars you have seen since leaving home, the dry dust 
blowing into your eyes, the gaping black holes of broken 
pavements, the unspeakable filthy the line of red brick build- 
ings prematurely decrepit, the sagging multitude of telegraph 
wires, the clumsy electric lights depending before the beer 
saloon and the groggery, the curious confusion of spruce- 
ness and squalor in the aspect of these latter, which also 
seem legion — confronting all this for the first time in three 
years, say, you think with wonder of your disappointment 
at not finding the Tuileries Gardens a mass of flowers, and 
with a blush of the times you have told Frenchmen that 



New York After Paris 443 

New York was very much like Paris. New York is at 
this moment the most foreign-looking city you have ever 
seen; in going abroad the American discounts the unex- 
pected; returning after the insensible orientation of Europe, 
the contrast with things recently familiar is prodigious, 
because one is so entirely unprepared for it. One thinks 
to be at home, and finds himself at the spectacle. New 
York is less like any European city than any European city 
is like any other. It is distinguished from them all — even 
from London — by the ignoble character of the res publicce, 
and the refuge of taste, care, wealth, pride, self-respect even, 
in private and personal regions. A splendid carriage, liv- 
eried servants without and Paris dresses within, rattling 
over the scandalous paving, splashed by the neglected mud, 
catching the rusty drippings of the hideous elevated rail- 
way, wrenching its axle in the tram-track in avoiding a 
mountainous wagon load of commerce on this hand and 
a garbage cart on that, caught in a jam of horse-cars and a 
blockade of trucks, finally depositing its dainty freight to 
pick its way across a sidewalk eloquent of official neglect 
and private contumely, to a shop door or a residence stoop — 
such a contrast as this sets us off from Europe very defi- 
nitely and in a very marked degree. 

There is no palpable New York in the sense in which there 
is a Paris, a Vienna, a Milan. You can touch it at no point. 
It is not even ocular. There is instead a Fifth Avenue, a 
Broadway, a Central Park, a Chatham Square. How they 
have dwindled, by the way. Fifth Avenue might be any one 
of a dozen London streets in the first impression it makes 
on the retina and leaves on the mind. The opposite side 
of Madison Square is but a step away. The spacious hall 
of the Fifth Avenue Hotel has shrunk to stifling proportions. 
Thirty-fourth Street is a lane ; the City Hall a band-box ; 
the Central Park a narrow strip of elegant landscape whose 



444 American Essays 

lateral limitations are constantly forced upon the sense by 
the Lenox Library on one side and a monster apartment 
house on the other. The American fondness for size — 
for pure bigness — needs explanation, it appears ; we care 
for size, but inartistically ; we care nothing for proportion, 
which is what makes size count. Everything is on the same 
scale; there is no play, no movement. An exception should 
be made in favor of the big business building and the apart- 
ment house which have arisen within a few years, and 
which have greatly accentuated the grotesqueness of the 
city's sky-line as seen from either the New Jersey or the 
Long Island shore. They are perhaps rather high than 
big; many of them were built before the authorities noticed 
them and followed unequally in the steps of other civilized 
municipal governments, from that of ancient Rome down, 
in prohibiting the passing of a fixed limit. But bigness has 
also evidently been one of their architectonic motives, and 
it is to be remarked that they are so far out of scale with 
the surrounding buildings as to avoid the usual common- 
place, only by creating a positively disagreeable effect. The 
aspect of Fifty-seventh Street between Broadway and Sev- 
enth Avenue, for example, is certainly that of the world 
upside down : a Gothic church utterly concealed, not to say 
crushed, by contiguous flats, and confronted by the over- 
whelming '' Osborne," which" towers above anything in the 
neighborhood, and perhaps makes the most powerful impres- 
sion that the returned traveler receives during his first week 
or two of strange sensations. Yet the " Osborne's " dimen- 
sions are not very different from those of the Arc de I'Etoile. 
It is true it does not face an avenue of majestic buildings 
a mile and a half long and two hundred and thirty feet 
wide, but the association of these two structures, one a pri- 
vate enterprise and the other a public monument, together 
with the obvious suggestions of each, furnish a not mis- 



New York After Paris 445 

leading illustration of both the spectacular and the moral 
contrast between New York and Paris, as it appears unduly 
magnified no doubt to the sense surprised to notice it 
at all. 

Still another reason for the foreign aspect of the New 
Yorker's native city is the gradual withdrawing of the 
American .element into certain quarters, its transformation 
or essential modification in others, and in the rest the pres- 
ence of the lees of Europe. At every step you are forced 
to realize that New York is the second Irish and the third 
01 fourth German city in the world. However great our 
success in drilling this foreign contingent of our social army 
into order and reason and self-respect — and it is not to be 
doubted that this success gives us a distinction wholly new 
in history — nevertheless our effect upon its members has 
been in the direction of development rather than of assimi- 
lation. We have given them our opportunity, permitted 
them the expansion denied them in their own several feu- 
dalities, made men of serfs, demonstrated the utility of self- 
government under the most trying conditions, proved the 
efficacy of our elastic institutions on a scale truly grandiose ; 
but evidently, so far as New York is concerned, we have 
done this at the sacrifice of a distinct and obvious nation- 
ality. To an observant sense New York is nearly as little 
national as Port Said. It contrasts absolutely in this respect 
with Paris, whose assimilating power is prodigious ; every 
foreigner in Paris eagerly seeks Parisianization. 

Ocularly, therefore, the '' note " of New York seems 
that of characterless individualism. The monotony of the 
chaotic composition and movement is, paradoxically, its most 
abiding impression. And as the whole is destitute of defi- 
niteness, of distinction, the parts are, correspondingly, indi- 
vidually insignificant. Where in the world are all the types ? 
one asks one's self in renev/ing his old walks and desultory 



44^ American Essays 

wanderings. Where is the New York counterpart of that 
astonishing variety of types which makes Paris what it is 
morally and pictorially, the Paris of Balzac as well as the 
Paris of M. Jean Beraud. Of a sudden the lack of nation- 
ality in our familiar literature and art becomes luminously 
explicable. One perceives why Mr. Howells is so successful 
in confining himself to the simplest, broadest, most repre- 
sentative representatives, why Mr. James goes abroad in- 
variably for his mise-en-scene, and often for his characters, 
why Mr. Reinhart lives in Paris, and Mr. Abbey in London. 
New York is this and that, it is incontestably unlike any 
other great city, but compared with Paris, its most impres- 
sive trait is its lack of that organic quality which results 
from variety of types. Thus compared, it seems to have 
only the variety of individuals which results in monotony. 
It is the difference between noise and music. Pictorially, 
the general aspect of New York is such that the mind 
speedily takes refuge in insensitiveness. Its expansiveness 
seeks exercise in other directions — business, dissipation, 
study, sestheticism, politics. The life of the senses is no 
longer possible. This is why one's sense for art is so stimu- 
lated by going abroad, and one's sense for art in its freest, 
frankest, most universal and least special^ intense and ener- 
vated development, is especially exhilarated by going to 
Paris. It is why, too, on one's return one can note the 
gradual decline of his sensitiveness, his severity — the pro- 
gressive atrophy of a sense no longer called into exercise. 
" I had no conception before," said a Chicago broker to me 
one day in Paris, with intelligent eloquence, '' of a finished 
city ! " Chicago undoubtedly presents a greater contrast 
to Paris than does New York, and so, perhaps, better pre- 
pares one to appreciate the Parisian quality, but the re- 
turned New Yorker cannot fail to be deeply impressed with 
the finish, the organic perfection, the elegance, and reserve 



New York After Paris 447 

of the Paris mirrored in his memory. Is it possible that 
the uniformity, the monotony of Paris architecture, the 
prose note in Parisian taste, should once have weighed upon 
his spirit? Riding once on the top of a Paris tramway, 
betraying an understanding of English by reading an Ameri- 
can newspaper, that sub-consciousness of moral isolation 
which the foreigner feels in Paris as elsewhere, was sud- 
denly and completely destroyed by my next neighbor, who 
remarked with contemptuous conviction and a Manhattan 
accent : " When you've seen one block of this infernal town 
youVe seen it all ! " He felt sure of sympathy in advance. 
Probably few New Yorkers would have differed with him. 
The universal light stone and brown paint, the wide side- 
walks, the asphalt pavement, the indefinitely multipled 
kiosks, the prevalence of a few marked kinds of vehicles, 
the uniformed workmen and workwomen, the infinite re- 
duplication, in a word, of easily recognized types, is at first 
mistaken by the New Yorker for that dead level of uni- 
formity which is, of all things in the world, the most tire- 
some to him in his own city. After a time, however, he 
begins to realize three important facts : In the first place 
these phenomena, which so vividly force themselves on his 
notice that their reduplication strikes him more than their 
qualities, are nevertheless of a quality altogether unex- 
ampled in his experience for fitness and agreeableness ; in 
the second place, they are details of a whole, members of 
an organism, and not they, but the city which they compose, 
the " finished city " of the acute Chicagoan, is the spectacle ; 
in the third place they serve as a background for the finest 
group of monuments in the world. On his return he per- 
ceives these things with a melancholy a non lucendo lu- 
minousness. The dead level of Murray Hill uniformity he 
finds the most agreeable aspect in the city. 

And the reason is that Paris has habituated him to the 



44^ American Essays 

exquisite, the rational, pleasure to be derived from that 
organic spectacle a " finished city," far more than that Mur- 
ray Hill is respectable and appropriate, and that almost any 
other prospect, except in spots of very limited area which 
emphasize the surrounding ugliness, is acutely displeasing. 
This latter is certainly very true. We have long frankly 
reproached ourselves with having no art commensurate with 
our distinction in other activities, resignedly attributing the 
lack to our hitherto necessary material preoccupation. But 
what we are really accounting for in this way is our lack 
of Titians and Bramantes. We are for the most part quite 
unconscious of the character of the American aesthetic sub- 
stratum, so to speak. As a matter of fact, we do far better 
in the production of striking artistic personalities than we 
do in the general medium of taste and culture. We figure 
well invariably at the Salon. At home the artist is simply 
either driven in upon himself, or else awarded by a naive 
clientele, an eminence so far out of perspective as to result 
unfortunately both for him and for the community. He 
pleases himself, follows his own bent, and prefers salience 
to conformability for his work, because his chief aim is to 
make an effect. This is especially true of those of our 
architects who have ideas. But these are the exceptions, 
of course, and the general aspect of the city is characterized 
by something far less agreeable than mere lack of symmetry ; 
it is characterized mainly by an all-pervading bad taste in 
every detail into which the element of art enters or should 
enter — that is to say, nearly everything that meets the eye. 

However, on the other hand, Parisian uniformity may 
depress exuberance, it is the condition and often the cause 
of the omnipresent good taste. Not only is it true that, 
as Mr. Hamerton remarks, " in the better quarters of the 
city a building hardly ever rises from the ground unless it 
has been designed by some architect who knows what art 



New York After Paris 449 

is, and endeavors to apply it to little things as well as great " ; 
but it is equally true that the national sense of form ex- 
presses itself in every appurtenance of life as well as in the 
masses and details of architecture. In New York our noisy 
diversity not only prevents any effect of ensemble and makes, 
as I say, the old commonplace brown stone regions the most 
reposeful and rational prospects of the city, but it precludes 
also, in a thousand activities and aspects, the operation of 
that salutary constraint and conformity without which the 
most acutely sensitive individuality inevitably declines to a 
lower level of form and taste. La mode, for example, seems 
scarcely to exist at all ; or at any rate to have taken refuge 
in the chimney-pot hat and the toiirnure. The dude, it is 
true, has been developed within a few years, but his dis- 
tinguishing trait of personal extinction has had much less 
success and is destined to a much shorter life than his appel- 
lation, which has wholly lost its original significance in 
gaining its present popularity. Every woman one meets in 
the street has a different bonnet. Every street car contains 
a millinery museum. And the mass of them may be judged 
after the circumstance that one of the most fashionable 
Eifth Avenue modistes flaunts a sign of enduring brass an- 
nouncing " English Round Hats and Bonnets." The enor- 
mous establishments of ready-made men's clothing seem 
not yet to have made their destined impression in the direc- 
tion of uniformity. The contrast in dress of the working 
classes with those of Paris is as conspicuously unfortunate 
aesthetically, as politically and socially it may be significant ; 
ocularly, it is a substitution of a cheap, faded, and ragged 
imitation of bourgeois costume for the marvel of neatness 
and propriety which composes the uniform of the Parisian 
ouvrier and ouvriere. Broadway below Tenth Street is a 
forest of signs which obscure the thoroughfare, conceal the 
buildings, overhang the sidewalks, and exhibit severally and 



450 American Essays 

collectively a taste in harmony with the Teutonic and 
Semitic enterprise which, almost exclusively, they attest. 
The shop-windows' show, which is one of the great spec- 
tacles of Paris, is niggard and shabby ; that of Philadelphia 
has considerably more interest, that of London nearly as 
much. Our clumsy coinage and countrified currency; our 
eccentric book-bindings ; that class of our furniture and 
interior decoration which may be described as American 
rococo ; that multifariously horrible machinery devised for 
excluding flies from houses and preventing them from alight- 
ing on dishes, for substituting a draught of air for stifling 
heat, for relieving an entire population from that surplusage 
of old-fashioned breeding involved in shutting doors, for 
rolling and rattling change in shops, for enabling you to 
" put only the exact fare in the box " ; the racket of pneu- 
matic tubes, of telephones, of aerial trains ; the practice 
of reticulating pretentious fagades with fire-escapes in lieu 
of fire-proof construction ; the vast mass of our nickel-plated 
paraphernalia ; our zinc cemetery monuments ; our comic 
valentines and serious Christmas cards, and grocery labels, 
and " fancy " job-printing and theater posters ; our con- 
spicuous cuspadores and our conspicuous need of more of 
them ; the *' tone " of many articles in our most popular 
journals, their references to each other, their illustrations; 
the Sunday panorama of shirt-sleeved ease and the week-day 
fatigue costume of curl papers and '' Mother Hubbards " 
general in some quarters; our sumptuous new bar-rooms, 
decorated perhaps on the principle that le mauvais gout 
mene an crime — all these phenomena, the list of which might 
be indefinitely extended, are so many witnesses of a general 
taste, public and private, which differs cardinally from that 
prevalent in Paris. 

In fine, the material spectacle of New York is such that 
at last, with some anxiety, one turns from the external vile- 



New York After Paris 451 

ness of every prospect to seek solace in the pleasure that 
man affords. But even after the wholesome American reac- 
tion has set in, and your appetite for the life of the senses 
is starved into indifference for what begins to seem to you 
an unworthy ideal ; after you are patriotically readjusted and 
feel once more the elation of living in the future owing to 
the dearth of sustenance in the present — ^you are still at 
the mercy of perceptions too keenly sharpened by your Paris 
sojourn to permit blindness to the fact that Paris and New 
York contrast as strongly in moral atmosphere as in mate- 
rial aspect. You become contemplative, and speculate pen- 
sively as to the character and quality of those native and 
normal conditions, those Relations, which finally you have 
definitely resumed. What is it — that vague and pervasive 
moral contrast which the American feels so potently on his 
return from abroad? How can we define that apparently 
undefinable difference which is only the more sensible for 
being so elusive? Book after book has been written about 
Europe from the American standpoint — about America from 
the European standpoint. None of them has specified what 
everyone has experienced. The spectacular and the mate- 
rial contrasts are easily enough characterized, and it is only 
the unreflecting or the superficial who exaggerate the im- 
portance of them. We are by no means at the mercy of 
our appreciation of Parisian spectacle, of the French ma- 
chinery of life. We miss or we do not miss the Salon Carre, 
the view of the south transept of Notre Dame as one de- 
scends the rue St. Jacques, the Theatre Francais, the 
concerts, the Luxembourg Gardens, the excursions to the 
score of charming suburban places, the library at the corner, 
the convenient cheap cab, the manners of the people, the 
quiet, the climate, the constant entertainment of the senses. 
We have in general too much work to do to waste much 
time in regretting these things. In general, work is by natu- 



452 American Essays 

ral selection so invariable a concomitant of our unrivaled 
opportunity to work profitably, that it absorbs our energies 
so far as this palpable sphere is concerned. But what is it 
that throughout the hours of busiest work and closest ap- 
plication, as well as in the preceding and following moments 
of leisure and the occasional intervals of relaxation, makes 
everyone vaguely perceive the vast moral difference between 
life here at home and life abroad — notably life in France? 
What is the subtle influence pervading the moral atmosphere 
in New York, which so markedly distinguishes what we call 
life here from life in Paris or even in Pennedepie ? 

It is, I think, distinctly traceable to the intense individu- 
alism which prevails among us. Magnificent results have 
followed our devotion to this force ; incontestably, we have 
spared ourselves both the acute and the chronic misery for 
which the tyranny of society over its constituent parts is 
directly responsible. We have, moreover, in this way not 
only freed ourselves from the tyranny of despotism, such for 
example as is exerted socially in England and politically 
in Russia, but we have undoubtedly developed a larger 
number of self-reliant and potentially capable social units 
than even a democratic system like that of France, which 
sacrifices the unit to the organism, succeeds in producing. 
We may truly say that, material as we are accused of being, 
we turn out more men than any other nationality. And if 
some Frenchman points out that we attach an esoteric sense 
to the term " man," and that at any rate our men are not 
better adapted than some others to a civilized environment 
which demands other qualities than honesty, energy, and 
intelligence, we may be quite content to leave him his objec- 
tion, and to prefer what seems to us manliness, to civiliza- 
tion itself. At the same time we cannot pretend that indi- 
vidualism has done everything for us that could be desired. 
In giving us the man it has robbed us of the milieu. Morally 



New York After Paris 453 

speaking, the milieu with us scarcely exists. Our difference 
from Europe does not consist in the difference between the 
European milieu and ours ; it consists in the fact that, com- 
paratively speaking of course, we have no milieu. If we 
are individually developed, we are also individually isolated 
to a degree elsewhere unknown. Politically we have parties 
who, in Cicero's phrase, " think the same things concerning 
the republic," but concerning very little else are we agreed 
in any mass of any moment. The number of our sauces 
is growing, but there is no corresponding diminution in the 
number of our religions. We have no communities. Our 
villages even are apt, rather, to be aggregations. Politics 
aside, there is hardly an American view of any phenomenon 
or class of phenomena. Every one of us likes, reads, sees, 
does what he chooses. Often dissimilarity is affected as 
adding piquancy of paradox. The judgment of the ages, the 
consensus of mankind, exercise no tyranny over the indi- 
vidual will. Do you believe in this or that, do you like 
this or that, are questions which, concerning the most funda- 
mental matters, nevertheless form the staple of conversa- 
tion in many circles. We live all of us apparently in a divine 
state of flux. The question asked at dinner by a lady in 
a neighboring city of a literary stranger, " What do you 
think of Shakespeare ? " is not exaggeratedly peculiar. We 
all think differently of Shakespeare, of Cromwell, of Titian, 
of Browning, of George Washington. Concerning matters 
as to which we must be fundamentally disinterested, we 
permit ourselves not only prejudice but passion. At the most 
we have here and there groups of personal acquaintance 
only, whose members are in accord in regard to some one 
thing, and quickly crystallize and precipitate at the mention 
of something that is really a corollary of the force which 
unites them. The efforts that have been made in New York, 
within the past twenty years, to establish various special 



454 American Essays 

milieus, so to speak, have been pathetic in their number and 
resuhlessness. Efforts of this sort are of course doomed 
to failure, because the essential trait of the milieu is spon- 
taneous existence, but their failure discloses the mutual re- 
pulsion which keeps the molecules of our society from 
uniting. How can it be otherwise when life is so specu- 
lative, so experimental, so wholly dependent on the personal 
force and idiosyncrasies of the individual? How shall we 
accept any general verdict pronounced by persons of no 
more authority than ourselves, and arrived at by processes 
in which we are equally expert? We have so little con- 
sensus as to anything, because we dread the loss of per- 
sonality involved in submitting to conventions, and because 
personality operates centrifugally alone. We make excep- 
tions in favor of such matters as the Copernican system and 
the greatness of our own future. There are things which 
we take on the credit of the consensus of authorities, for 
which we may not have all the proofs at hand. But as to 
conventions of all sorts, our attitude is apt to be one of 
suspicion and uncertainty. Mark Twain, for example, first 
won his way to the popular American heart by exposing 
the humbugs of the Cinque-cento. Specifically the most 
teachable of people, nervously eager for information, Ameri- 
cans are nevertheless wholly distrustful of generalizations 
made by anyone else, and little disposed to receive blindly 
formularies and classifications of phenomena as to which 
they have had no experience. And of experience we have 
necessarily had, except politically, less than any civilized 
people in the world. 

We are infinitely more at home amid universal mobility. 
We want to act, to exert ourselves, to be, as we imagine, 
nearer to nature. We have our tastes in painting as in 
confectionery. Some of us prefer Tintoretto to Rem- 
brandt, as we do chocolate to cocoanut. In respect of taste 



New York After Paris 455 

it would be impossible for the gloomiest skeptic to deny that 
this is an exceedingly free country. '' I don't know anything 
about the subject (whatever the subject may be), but I 
know what I like," is a remark which is heard on every 
hand, and which witnesses the sturdiness of our struggle 
against the tyranny of conventions and the indomitable 
nature of our independent spirit. In criticism the individual 
spirit fairly runs a-muck ; it takes its lack of concurrence as 
credentials of impartiality often. In constructive art every- 
one is occupied less with nature than with the point of view. 
Mr. Howells himself displays more delight in his naturalistic 
attitude than zest in his execution, which, compared with 
that of the French naturalists, is in general faint-hearted 
enough. Everyone writes, paints, models, exclusively the 
point of view. Fidelity in following out nature's sugges- 
tions, in depicting the emotions nature arouses, a sympa- 
thetic submission to nature's sentiment, absorption into 
nature's moods and subtle enfoldings, are extremely rare. 
The artist's eye is fixed on the treatment. He is " creative " 
by main strength. He is penetrated with a desire to get 
away from " the same old thing," to " take it " in a new way, 
to draw attention to himself, to shine. One would say that 
every American nowadays who handles a brush or designs 
a building, was stimulated by the secret ambition of found- 
ing a school. We have in art thus, with a vengeance, that 
personal element which is indeed its savor, but which 
it is fatal to make its substance. We have it still 
more conspicuously in life. What do you think of him, 
or her? is the first question asked after every introduction. 
Of every new individual we meet we form instantly some 
personal impression. The criticism of character is nearly 
the one disinterested activity in which we have become 
expert. We have for this a peculiar gift, apparently, which 
we share with gypsies and money-lenders, and other people 



456 American Essays 

in whom the social instinct is chiefly latent. Our gossip 
takes on the character of personal judgments rather than 
of tittle-tattle. It concerns not what So-and-So has done, 
but what kind of a person So-and-So is. It would hardly 
be too much to say that So-and-So never leaves a group 
of which he is not an intimate without being immediately, 
impartially but fundamentally, discussed. To a degree not 
at all suspected by the author of the phrase, he '' leaves 
his character " with them on quitting any assemblage of his 
acquaintance. 

The great difficulty with our individuality and independ- 
ence is that differentiation begins so soon and stops so far 
short of real importance. In no department of life has 
the law of the survival of the fittest, that principle in virtue 
of whose operation societies become distinguished and ad- 
mirable, had time to work. Our social characteristics are 
inventions, discoveries, not survival. Nothing with us has 
passed into the stage of instinct. And for this reason some 
of our '' best people," some of the most " thoughtful "among 
us, have less of that quality best characterized as social 
maturity than a Parisian washerwoman or concierge. Cen- 
turies of sifting, ages of gravitation toward harmony and 
homogeneity, have resulted for the French in a delightful 
immunity from the necessity of " proving all things " re- 
morselessly laid on every individual of our society. Very 
many matters, at any rate, which to the French are matters 
of course, our self-respect pledges us to a personal examina- 
tion of. The idea of sparing ourselves trouble in thinking 
occurs to us far more rarely than to other peoples. We 
have certainly an insufficient notion of the superior results 
reached by economy and system in this respect. 

In one of Mr. Henry James's cleverest sketches, Lady 
Barherina, the English heroine marries an American and 
comes to live in New York. She finds it dull. She is home- 



New York After Paris 457 

sick without quite knowing why. Mr. James is at his best 
in exhibiting at once the intensity of her disgust and the 
intangibiUty of its provocation. We are not all like " Lady 
Barb." We do not all like London, whose materialism is 
only more splendid, not less uncompromising than our own ; 
but we cannot help perceiving that what that unfortunate 
lady missed in New York was the milieu — an environment 
sufficiently developed to permit spontaneity and free play of 
thought and feeling, and a certain domination of shifting 
merit by fixed relations which keeps one's mind off that 
disagreeable subject of contemplation, one's self. Everyone 
seems acutely self-conscious; and the self-consciousness of 
the unit is fatal, of course, to the composure of the ensemble. 
The number of people intently minding their P's and Q's, 
reforming their orthoepy, practicing new discoveries in eti- 
quette, making over their names, and in general exhibiting 
that activity of the amateur known as " going through the 
motions " to the end of bringing themselves up, as it were, 
is very noticeable in contrast with French oblivion to this 
kind of personal exertion. Even our simplicity is apt to be 
simplesse. And the conscientiousness in educating others 
displayed by those who are so fortunate as to have reached 
perfection nearly enough to permit relaxation in self- 
improvement, is only equaled by the avidity in acquisitive- 
ness displayed by the learners themselves. Meantime the 
composure born of equality, as well as that springing from 
unconsciousness, sufifers. Our society is a kind of Jacob's 
ladder, to maintain equilibrium upon which requires an 
amount of effort on the part of the personally estimable 
gymnasts perpetually ascending and descending, in the high- 
est degree hostile to spontaneity, to serenity, and stability. 

Naturally, thus, everyone is personally preoccupied to a 
degree unknown in France. And it is not necessary that this 
preoccupation should concern any side of that multifarious 



458 American Essays 

monster we know as '' business." It may relate strictly 
to the paradox of seeking employment for leisure. Even the 
latter is a terribly conscious proceeding. We go about it 
with a mental deliberateness singularly in contrast with our 
physical precipitancy. But it is mainly " business," perhaps, 
that accentuates our individualism. The condition of 
desocitvrement is positively disreputable. It arouses the sus- 
picion of acquaintance and the anxiety of friends. Occupa- 
tion to the end of money-getting is our normal condition, 
any variation from which demands explanation, as little 
likely to be entirely honorable. Such occupation is, as I 
said, the inevitable sequence of the opportunity for it, and 
is the wiser and more dignified because of its necessity to 
the end of securing independence. What the Frenchman 
can secure merely by the exercise of economy is with us only 
the reward of energy and enterprise in acquisition — so com- 
paratively speculative and hazardous is the condition of our 
business. And whereas with us money is far harder to 
keep, and is moreover something which it is far harder to be 
without than is the case in France, the ends of self-respect, 
freedom from mortification, and getting the most out of life, 
demand that we should take constant advantage of the fact 
that it is easier to get. Consequently everyone who is, as we 
say, worth anything, is with us adjusted to the prodigious 
dynamic condition which characterizes our existence. And 
such occupation is tremendously absorbing. Our opportu- 
nity is fatally handicapped by this remorseless necessity 
of embracing it. It yields us fruit after its kind, but it 
rigorously excludes us from tasting any other. Everyone 
is engaged in preparing the working drawings of his own 
fortune. There is no co-operation possible, because compe- 
tition is the life of enterprise. 

In the resultant manners the city illustrates Carlyle's 
" anarchy plus the constable." Never was the struggle for 



New York After Paris 459 

existence more palpable, more naked, and more unplctorial. 
'' It is the art of mankind to polish the world,'' says Thoreau 
somewhere, '' and everyone who works is scrubbing in some 
part." Everyone certainly is here at work, yet was there 
ever such scrubbing with so little resultant polish? The 
disproportion would be tragic if it were not grotesque. 
Amid all " the hurry and rush of life along the sidewalks," 
as the newspapers say, one might surely expect to find the 
unexpected. The spectacle ought certainly to have the 
interest of picturesqueness which is inherent in the fortui- 
tous. Unhappily, though there is hurry and rush enough, 
it is the bustle of business, not the dynamics of what is 
properly to be called life. The elements of the picture lack 
dignity — so completely as to leave the ensemble quite with- 
out accent. More incidents in the drama of real life will 
happen before midnight to the individuals who compose the 
orderly Boulevard procession in Paris than those of its 
chaotic Broadway counterpart will experience in a month. 
The latter are not really more impressive because they are 
apparently all running errands and include no flaneurs. 
The Mneiir would fare ill should anything draw him into 
the stream. Everything being adjusted to the motive of 
looking out for one's self, any of the sidewalk civility and 
mutual interest which obtain in Paris would throw the entire 
machine out of gear. Whoever is not in a hurry is in the 
way. A man running after an omnibus at the Madeleine 
would come into collision with fewer people and cause less 
disturbance than one who should stop on Fourteenth Street 
to apologize for an inadvertent jostle, or to give a lady any 
surplusage of passing room. He would be less ridiculous. 
A friend recently returned from Paris told me that, on 
several street occasions, his involuntary " Excuse me ! '* had 
been mistaken for a salutation and answered by a " How 
do you do ? " and a stare of speculation. Apologies of this 



460 American Essays 

class sound to us, perhaps, like a subtle and deprecatory 
impeachment of our large tolerance and universal good 
nature. 

In this way our undoubted self-respect undoubtedly loses 
something of its bloom. We may prefer being jammed 
into street-cars and pressed against the platform rails of 
the elevated road to the tedious v^aiting at Paris 'bus sta- 
tions — to mention one of the perennial and principal points 
of contrast which monopolize the thoughts of the average 
American sojourner in the French capital. But it is terribly 
vulgarizing. The contact and pressure are abominable. To 
a Parisian the daily experience in this respect of those of our 
women who have no carriages of their own, would seem 
as singular as the latter would find the Oriental habit of 
regarding the face as more important than other portions 
of the female person to keep concealed. But neither men 
nor women can persist in blushing at the intimacy of rude- 
ness to which our crowding subjects them in common. 
The only resource is in blunted sensibility. And the 
manners thus negatively produced we do not quite appre- 
ciate in their enormity because the edge of our appreciation 
is thus necessarily dulled. The conductor scarcely ceases 
whistling to poke you for your fare. Other whistlers ap- 
parently go on forever. Loud talking follows naturally 
from the impossibility of personal seclusion in the presence 
of others. Our Sundays have lost secular decorum very 
much in proportion as they have lost Puritan observance. 
If we have nothing quite comparable with a London bank 
holiday, or with the conduct of the popular cohorts of the 
Epsom army ; if only in " political picnics *' and the excur- 
sions of '' gangs *' of '' toughs '' we illustrate absolute bar- 
barism, it is nevertheless true that, from Central Park to 
Coney Island, our people exhibit a conception of the fitting 
employment of periodical leisure which would seem indeco- 



New York After Paris 461 

rous to a crowd of Belleville ouvriers. If we have not the 
cad, we certainly possess in abundance the species " hood- 
lum," which, though morally far more refreshing, is yet 
aesthetically intolerable; and the hoodlum is nearly as rare 
in Paris as the cad. Owing to his presence and to the atmos- 
phere in which he thrives, we find ourselves, in spite of the 
most determined democratic convictions, shunning crowds 
whenever it is possible to shun them. The most robust of 
us easily get into the frame of mind of a Boston young 
woman, to whom the Champs-Elysees looked like a rail- 
way station, and who wished the people would get up from 
the benches and go home. Our life becomes a life of the 
interior ; wherefore, in spite of a climate that permits walks 
abroad, we confine out-door existence to Newport lawns 
and camps in the Adirondacks; and whence proceeds that 
carelessness of the exterior which subordinates architecture 
to " household art,*' and makes of our streets such mere 
thoroughfares lined with '' homes." 

The manners one encounters in street and shop in Paris 
are, it is well known, very different from our own. But 
no praise of them ever quite prepares an American for 
their agreeableness and simplicity. We are always agree- 
ably surprised at the absence of elaborate manner which 
eulogists of French manners in general omit to note; and 
indeed it is an extremely elusive quality. Nothing is further 
removed from that intrusion of the national gemilthlichkeit 
into so impersonal a matter as affairs, large or small, which 
to an occasional sense makes the occasional German manner 
enjoyable. Nothing is farther from the obsequiousness of 
the London shopman, which rather dazes the American than 
pleases him. Nothing, on the other hand, is farther from 
our own bald dispatch. With us every shopper expects, 
or at any rate is prepared for, obstruction rather than 
facilitation on the seller's side. The drygoods counter, espe- 



462 American Essays 

cially when the attendant is of the gentler sex, is a kind 
of chevaux-de-frise. The retail atmosphere is charged with 
an affectation of unconsciousness ; not only is every transac- 
tion impersonal, it is mechanical ; ere long it must become 
automatic. In many cases there is to be encountered a 
certain defiant attitude to the last degree unhappy in its 
effects on the manners involved — a certain self-assertion 
which begs the question, else unmooted, of social equality, 
with the result for the time being of the most unsocial 
relation probably existing among men. Perfect personal 
equality for the time being invariably exists between cus- 
tomer and tradesman in France; the man or woman who 
serves you is first of all a fellow-creature; a shop, to be 
sure, is not a conversazione, but if you are in a loquacious 
or inquisitive mood you will be deemed neither frivolous nor 
familiar — nor yet an inanimate obstacle to the flow of the 
most important as well as the most impetuous of the currents 
of life. 

Certainly, in New York, we are too vain of our bustle 
to realize how mannerless and motiveless it is. The essence 
of life is movement, but so is the essence of epilepsy. More- 
over the life of the New Yorker who chases street-cars, eats 
at a lunch counter, drinks what will '' take hold '* quickly 
at a bar he can quit instantly, reads only the head-lines of 
his newspaper, keeps abreast of the intellectual movement 
by inspecting the display of the Elevated Railway news- 
stands while he fumes at having to wait two minutes for 
his train, hastily buys his tardy ticket of sidewalk specu- 
lators, and leaves the theater as if it were on fire — the life 
of such a man is, notwithstanding all its futile activity, 
varied by long spaces of absolute mental stagnation, of 
moral coma. Not only is our hurry not decorous, not de- 
cent ; it is not real activity, it is as little as possible like the 
animated existence of Paris, where the moral nature is kept 



New York After Paris 463 

in constant operation, intense or not as the case may be, 
in spite of the external and material tranquillity. Owing 
to this lack of a real, a rational activity, our individual civili- 
zation, which seems when successful a scramble, and when 
unlucky a sauve qui pent, is, morally as well as spectacu- 
larly, not ill described in so far as its external aspect is 
concerned by the epithet Hat. Enervation seems to menace 
those whom hypersesthesia spares. 

" We go to Europe to become Americanized," says Emer- 
son, but France Americanizes us less in this sense than any 
other country of Europe, and perhaps Emerson was not 
thinking so much of her democratic development into social 
order and efficiency as of the less American and more feudal 
European influences, which do indeed, while we are subject 
to them, intensify our affection for our own institutions, 
our confidence in our own outlook. One must admit that 
in France (which nowadays follows our ideal of liberty per- 
haps as closely as we do hers of equality and fraternity, 
and where consequently our political notions receive few 
shocks) not only is the life of the senses more agreeable 
than it is with us, but the mutual relations of men are more 
felicitous also. And alas ! Americans who have savored 
these sweets cannot avail themselves of the implication con- 
tained in Emerson's further words — words which approach 
nearer to petulance than anything in his urbane and placid 
utterances — " those who prefer London or Paris to America 
may be spared to return to those capitals." " II faut vivre, 
combattre, et finir avec les siens," says Doudan, and no law 
is more inexorable. The fruits of foreign gardens are, how- 
ever delectable, enchanted for us ; we may not touch them ; 
and to pass our lives in covetous inspection of them is as 
barren a performance as may be imagined. For this reason 
the question '' Should you like better to live here or 



464 American Essays 

abroad? " is as little practical as it is frequent. The empty 
life of the " foreign colonies "' in Paris is its sufficient answer. 
Not only do most of us have to stay at home, but for every- 
one except the inconsiderable few who can better do abroad 
the work they have to do, and except those essentially un- 
American waifs who can contrive no work for themselves, 
life abroad is not only less profitable but less pleasant. The 
American endeavoring to acclimatize himself in Paris hardly 
needs to have cited to him the words of Epictetus : " Man, 
thou hast forgotten thine object ; thy journey was not to 
this, but through this " — he is sure before long to become 
dismally persuaded of their truth. More speedily than else- 
where perhaps, he finds out in Paris the truth of Car- 
lyle's assurance : " It is, after all, the one unhappiness of 
a man. That he cannot work ; that he cannot get his destiny 
as a man fulfilled." For the work which insures the felicity 
of the French life of the senses and of French human rela- 
tions he cannot share ; and, thus, the question of the relative 
attractiveness of French and American life — of Paris and 
New York — becomes the idle and purely speculative question 
as to whether one would like to change his personal and 
national identity. 

And this an American may permit himself the chauvinism 
of believing a less rational contradiction of instinct in him- 
self than it would be in the case of anyone else. And for 
this reason : that in those elements of life which tend to 
the development and perfection of the individual soul in 
the work of fulfilling its mysterious destiny, American char- 
acter and American conditions are especially rich. Bun- 
yan's genius exhibits its characteristic felicity in giving the 
name of Hopeful to the successor of that Faithful who per- 
ished in the town of Vanity. It would be a mark of that 
loose complacency in which we are too often offenders, to 
associate the scene of Faithful's martyrdom with the Europe 



New York After Paris 465 

from which definitively we set out afresh a century ago; 
but it is impossible not to recognize that on our forward 
journey to the celestial country of national and individual 
success, our conspicuous inspiration and constant comforter 
is that hope whose cheering ministrations the '' weary 
Titans " of Europe enjoy in far narrower measure. Living 
in the future has an indisputably tonic effect upon the moral 
sinews, and contributes an exhilaration to the spirit which 
no sense of attainment and achieved success can give. We 
are after all the true idealists of the world. Material as are 
the details of our preoccupation, our sub-consciousness is 
sustained by a general aspiration that is none the less heroic 
for being, perhaps, somewhat naif as well. The times and 
moods when one's energy is excited, when something occurs 
in the continuous drama of life to bring sharply into relief 
its vivid interest and one's own intimate share therein, when 
nature seems infinitely more real than the societies she 
includes, when the missionary, the pioneer, the constructive 
spirit is aroused, are far more frequent with us than with 
other peoples. Our intense individualism happily modified 
by our equality, our constant, active, multiform struggle 
with the environment, do at least, as I said, produce men; 
and if we use the term in an esoteric sense we at least know 
its significance. Of our riches in this respect New York 
alone certainly gives no exaggerated idea — however it may 
otherwise epitomize and typify our national traits. A walk 
on Pennsylvania Avenue ; a drive among the '' homes '' of 
Buffalo or Detroit — or a dozen other true centers of com- 
munal life which have a concrete impressiveness that for 
the most part only great capitals in Europe possess ; a tour 
of college commencements in scores of spots consecrated 
to the exaltation of the permanent over the evanescent ; con- 
tact in any wise with the prodigious amount of right feeling 
manifested in a hundred ways throughout a country whose 



466 American Essays 

prosperity stimulates generous impulse, or with the number 
of '' good fellows " of large, shrewd, humorous views of life, 
critical perhaps rather than constructive, but at all events 
untouched by cynicism, perfectly competent and admirably 
confident, with a livelier interest in everything within their 
range of vision than can be felt by anyone mainly occupied 
with sensuous satisfaction, saved from boredom by a robust 
imperviousness, ready to begin life over again after every 
reverse with unenfeebled spirit, and finding, in the working 
out of their own personal salvation according to the gospel 
of necessity and opportunity, that joy which the pursuit 
of pleasure misses — experiences of every kind, in fine, that 
familiarize us with what is especially American in our 
civilization, are agreeable as no foreign experiences can be, 
because they are above all others animating and sustain- 
ing. Life in America has for everyone, in proportion to his 
seriousness, the zest that accompanies the *' advance on 
Chaos and the Dark." Meantime, one's last word about the 
America emphasized by contrast with the organic and 
solidaire society of France, is that, for insuring order and 
efficiency to the lines of this advance, it would be difficult 
to conceive too gravely the utility of observing attentively 
the work in the modern world of the only other great nation 
that follows the democratic standard, and is perennially 
prepared to make sacrifices for ideas. 



[From French Traits, by W. C. Brownell. Copyright, 1888, 1889, by 
Charles Scribner's Sons.] 



THE TYRANNY OF THINGS 
Edward Sandford Martin 

A traveler newly returned from the Pacific Ocean tells 
pleasant stories of the Patagonians. As the steamer he 
was in was passing through Magellan's Straits some natives 
came out to her in boats. They wore no clothes at all, 
though there was snow in the air. A baby that came along 
with them made some demonstration that displeased its 
mother, who took it by the foot, as Thetis took Achilles, 
and soused it over the side of the boat into the cold sea- 
water. When she pulled it in, it lay a moment whimpering 
in the bottom of the boat, and then curled up and went to 
sleep. The missionaries there have tried to teach the natives 
to wear clothes, and to sleep in huts ; but, so far, the traveler 
says, with very limited success. The most shelter a Pata- 
gonian can endure is a little heap of rocks or a log to the 
windward of him ; as for clothes, he despises them, and he 
is indifferent to ornament. 

To many of us, groaning under the oppression of modern 
conveniences, it seems lamentably meddlesome to under- 
mine the simplicity of such people, and enervate them with 
the luxuries of civilization. To be able to sleep out-o- 
doors, and go naked, and take sea-baths on wintry days with 
impunity, would seem a most alluring emancipation. No 
rent to pay, no tailor, no plumber, no newspaper to be read 
on pain of getting behind the times ; no regularity in any- 
thing, not even meals ; nothing to do except to find food, 
and no expense for undertakers or physicians, even if we 
fail ; what a fine, untrammeled life it would be ! It takes occa- 

467 



468 American Essays 

sional contact with such people as the Patagonians to keep 
us in mind that civilization is the mere cultivation of our 
wants, and that the higher it is the more our necessities are 
multiplied, until, if we are rich enough, we get enervated by 
luxury, and the young men come in and carry us out. 

We want so many, many things, it seems a pity that those 
simple Patagonians could not send missionaries to us to 
show us how to do without. The comforts of life, at the 
rate they are increasing, bid fair to bury us soon, as Tarpeia 
was buried under the shields of her friends the Sabines. 
Mr. Hamerton, in speaking of the increase of comfort 
in England, groans at the " trying strain of expense to which 
our extremely high standard of living subjects all except 
the rich.'' It makes each individual of us very costly to 
keep, and constantly tempts people to concentrate on the 
maintenance of fewer individuals means that would in sim- 
pler times be divided among many. " My grandfather," 
said a modern the other day, " left $200,000. He was con- 
sidered a rich man in those days ; but, dear me ! he supported 
four or five families — all his needy relations and all my 
grandmother's.'' Think of an income of $10,000 a year 
being equal to such a strain, and providing suitably for a 
rich man's large family in the bargain ! It wouldn't go so 
far now, and yet most of the reasonable necessaries of life 
cost less to-day than they did two generations ago. The 
difference is that we need so very many comforts that were 
not invented in our grandfather's time. 

There is a hospital, in a city large enough to keep a large 
hospital busy, that is in straits for money. Its income from 
contributions last year was larger by nearly a third than its 
income ten years ago, but its expenses were nearly double 
its income. There were some satisfactory reasons for the 
discrepancy — the city had grown, the number of patients had 
increased, extraordinary repairs had been made — but at 



The Tyranny of Things 469 

the bottom a very large expenditure seemed to be due to 
the struggle of the managers to keep the institution up to 
modern standards. The patients are better cared for than 
they used to be ; the nurses are better taught and more skill- 
ful ; " conveniences " have been greatly multiplied ; the heat- 
ing and cooking and laundry work is all done in the best 
manner with the most approved apparatus ; the plumbing is 
as safe as sanitary engineering can make it; the appliances 
for antiseptic surgery are fit for a fight for life ; there are 
detached buildings for contagious diseases, and an out-pa- 
tient department, and the whole concern is administered with 
wisdom and economy. There is only one distressing circum- 
stance about this excellent charity, and that is that its ex- 
penses exceed its income. And yet its managers have not been 
extravagant: they have only done what the enlightened ex- 
perience of the day has considered to be necessary. If the 
hospital has to shut down and the patients must be turned 
out, at least the receiver will find a well-appointed institu- 
tion of which the managers have no reason to be ashamed. 

The trouble seems to be with very many of us, in con- 
temporary private life as well as in institutions, that the 
enlightened experience of the day invents more necessaries 
than we can get the money to pay for. Our opulent friends 
are constantly demonstrating to us by example how indis- 
pensably convenient the modern necessaries are, and we keep 
having them until we either exceed our incomes or miss 
the higher concerns of life in the efifort to maintain a com- 
plete outfit of its creature comforts. 

And the saddest part of all is that it is in such great meas- 
ure an American development. We Americans keep invent- 
ing new necessaries, and the people of the efifete monarchies 
gradually adopt such of them as they can afford. When 
we go abroad we growl about the inconveniences of Euro- 
pean life — the absence of gas in bedrooms, the scarcity and 



470 American Essays 

sluggishness of elevators, the primitive nature of the plumb- 
ing, and a long list of other things without which life seems 
to press unreasonably upon our endurance. Nevertheless, 
if the res angustce domi get straiter than usual, we are 
always liable to send our families across the water to spend 
a season in the practice of economy in some land where it 
costs less to live. 

Of course it all belongs to Progress, and no one is quite 
willing to have it stop, but it does a comfortable sufferer 
good to get his head out of his conveniences sometimes and 
complain. 

There was a story in the newspapers the other day about 
a Massachusetts minister who resigned his charge because 
someone had given his parish a fine house, and his par- 
ishioners wanted him to live in it. His salary was too small, 
he said, to admit of his living in a big house, and he would 
not do it. He was even deaf to the proposal that he should 
share the proposed tenement with the sewing societies and 
clubs of his church, and when the matter came to a serious 
issue, he relinquished his charge and sought a new field of 
usefulness. The situation was an amusing instance of the 
embarrassment of riches. Let no one to whom restricted 
quarters may have grown irksome, and who covets larger 
dimensions of shelter, be too hasty in deciding that the min- 
ister was wrong. Did you ever see the house that Haw- 
thorne lived in at Lenox? Did you ever see Emerson's 
house at Concord? They are good houses for Americans 
to know and remember. They permitted thought. 

A big house is one of the greediest cormorants which can 
light upon a little income. Backs may go threadbare and 
stomachs may worry along on indifferent filling, but a house 
will have things, though its occupants go without. It is 
rarely complete, and constantly tempts the imagination to 
flights in brick and dreams in lath and plaster. It develops 



The Tyranny of Things 471 

annual thirsts for paint and wall-paper, at least, if not 
for marble and wood-carving. The plumbing in it must be 
kept in order on pain of death. Whatever price is put on 
coal, it has to be heated in winter; and if it is rural or 
suburban, the grass about it must be cut even though 
funerals in the family have to be put off for the mowing. 
If the tenants are not rich enough to hire people to keep 
their house clean, they must do it themselves, for there is 
no excuse that will pass among housekeepers for a dirty 
house. The master of a house too big for him may expect 
to spend the leisure which might be made intellectually or 
spiritually profitable, in acquiring and putting into practice 
fag ends of the arts of the plumber, the bell-hanger, the 
locksmith, the gasfitter, and the carpenter. Presently he will 
know how to do everything that can be done in the house, 
except enjoy himself. He will learn about taxes, too, and 
water-rates, and how such abominations as sewers or new 
pavements are always liable to accrue at his expense. As 
for the mistress, she will be a slave to carpets and curtains, 
wall-paper, painters, and women who come in by the day 
to clean. She will be lucky if she gets a chance to say her 
prayers, and thrice and four times happy when she can 
read a book or visit with her friends. To live in a big 
house may be a luxury, provided that one has a full set of 
money and an enthusiastic housekeeper in one's family ; but 
to scrimp in a big house is a miserable business. Yet such 
is human folly, that for a man to refuse to live in a house 
because it is too big for him, is such an exceptional exhibi- 
tion of sense that it becomes the favorite paragraph of a day 
in the newspapers. 

An ideal of earthly comfort, so common that every reader 
must have seen it, is to get a house so big that it is burden- 
some to maintain, and fill it up so full of jimcracks that 
it is a constant occupation to keep it in order. Then, when 



472 American Essays 

the expense of living in it is so great that you can't afford 
to go away and rest from the burden of it, the situation is 
complete and boarding-houses and cemeteries begin to yawn 
for you. How many Americans, do you suppose, out of the 
droves that flock annually to Europe, are running away from 
oppressive houses? 

When nature undertakes to provide a house, it fits the 
occupant. Animals which build by instinct build only what 
they need, but man's building instinct, if it gets a chance 
to spread itself at all, is boundless, just as all his instincts 
are. For it is man's peculiarity that nature has filled him 
with impulses to do things, and left it to his discretion when 
to stop. She never tells him when he has finished. And 
perhaps we ought not to be surprised that in so many cases 
it happens that he doesn't know, but just goes ahead as long 
as the materials last. 

If another man tries to oppress him, he understands that 
and is ready to fight to death and sacrifice all he has, rather 
than submit ; but the tyranny of things is so subtle, so 
gradual in its approach, and comes so masked with seeming 
benefits, that it has him hopelessly bound before he sus- 
pects his fetters. He says from day to day, " I will add thus 
to my house ;" " I will have one or two more horses ;" " I will 
make a little greenhouse in my garden ;" " I will allow my- 
self the luxury of another hired man ;" and so he goes on hav- 
ing things and imagining that he is richer for them. Pres- 
ently he begins to realize that it is the things that own him. 
He has piled them up on his shoulders, and there they sit like 
Sindbad's Old Man and drive him; and it becomes a daily 
question whether he can keep his trembling legs or not. 

All of which is not meant to prove that property has no 
real value, or to rebut Charles Lamb's scornful denial that 
enough is as good as a feast. It is not meant to apply to the 
rich, who can have things comfortably, if they are philo- 



The Tyranny of Things 473 

sophical ; but to us poor, who have constant need to remind 
ourselves that where the verbs to have and to he cannot 
both be completely inflected, the verb to he is the one that 
best repays concentration. 

Perhaps we would not be so prone to swamp ourselves 
with luxuries and vain possessions that we cannot afford, 
if it were not for our deep-lying propensity to associate with 
people who are better off than we are. It is usually the 
sight of their appliances that upsets our little stock of sense, 
and lures us into an improvident competition. 

There is a proverb of Solomon's which prophesies finan- 
cial wreck or ultimate misfortune of some sort to people 
who make gifts to the rich. Though not expressly stated, 
it is somehow implied that the proverb is intended not as a 
warning to the rich themselves, who may doubtless exchange 
presents with impunity, but for persons whose incomes rank 
somewhere between " moderate circumstances " and desti- 
tution. That such persons should need to be warned not 
to spend their substance on the rich seems odd, but when 
Solomon was busied with precept he could usually be 
trusted not to waste either words or wisdom. Poor people 
are constantly spending themselves upon the rich, not only 
because they like them, but often from an instinctive con- 
viction that such expenditure is well invested. I wonder 
sometimes whether this is true. 

To associate with the rich seems pleasant and profitable. 
They are apt to be agreeable and well informed, and it is 
good to play with them and enjoy the usufruct of all their 
pleasant apparatus ; but, of course, you can neither hope 
nor wish to get anything for nothing. Of the cost of the 
practice, the expenditure of time still seems to be the item 
that is most serious. It takes a great deal of time to 
cultivate the rich successfully. If they are working people 
their time is so much more valuable than yours, that when 



474 American Essays 

you visit with them it is apt to be your time that is sacri- 
ficed. If they are not working people it is worse yet. Their 
special outings, when they want your company, always come 
when you cannot get away from work except at some great 
sacrifice, which, under the stress of temptation, you are too 
apt to make. Their pleasuring is on so large a scale that 
you cannot make it fit your times or necessities. You can't 
go yachting for half a day, nor will fifty dollars take you 
far on the way to shoot big game in Manitoba. You simply 
cannot play with them when they play, because you cannot 
reach; and when they work you cannot play with them, be- 
cause their time then is worth so much a minute that you 
cannot bear to waste it. And you cannot play with them 
when you are working yourself and they are inactively at 
leisure, because, cheap as your time is, you can't spare it. 

Charming and likeable as they are, and good to know, it 
must be admitted that there is a superior convenience about 
associating most of the time with people who want to do 
about what we want to do at about the same time, and 
whose abilities to do what they wish approximate to ours. 
It is not so much a matter of persons as of times and means. 
You cannot make your opportunities concur with the oppor- 
tunities of people whose incomes are ten times greater than 
yours. When you play together it is at a sacrifice, and 
one which you have to make. Solomon was right. To 
associate with very rich people involves sacrifices. You 
cannot even be rich yourself without expense, and you may 
just as well give over trying. Count it, then, among the 
costs of a considerable income that in enlarging the range 
of your sports it inevitably contracts the circle of those who 
will find it profitable to share them. 



[From Windfalls of Observation, by Edward Sandford Martin. 
Copyright, 1893, by Charles Scribner's Sons.] 



FREE TRADE VS. PROTECTION IN LITERATURE 

Samuel McChord Crothers 

In the old-fashioned text-book we used to be told that 
the branch of learning that was treated was at once an art 
and a science. Literature is much more than that. It is 
an art, a science, a profession, a trade, and an accident. 
The literature that is of lasting value is an accident. It is 
something that happens. After it has happened, the his- 
torical critics busy themselves in explaining it. But they 
are not able to predict the next stroke of genius. 

Shelley defines poetiy as the record of " the best and 
happiest moments of the best and happiest minds." When 
we are fortunate enough to happen in upon an author at 
one of these happy moments, then, as the country newspaper 
would say, " a very enjoyable time was had.'" After we 
have said all that can be said about art and craftsmanship, 
we put our hopes upon a happy chance. Literature cannot 
be standardized. We never know how the most painstaking 
work may turn out. The most that can be said of the 
literary -life is what Sancho Panza said of the profession 
of knight-errantry : '' There is something delightful in going 
about in expectation of accidents." 

After a meeting in behalf of Social Justice, an eager, 
distraught young man met me, in the streets of Boston, 
and asked : 

" You believe in the principle of equality ? " 

" Yes." 

" Don't I then have just as much right to be a genius as 
Shakespeare had ? " 

475 



476 American Essays 

" Yes." 

'' Then why ain't I ? " 

I had to confess that I didn't know. 

It is with this chastened sense of our limitations that 
we meet for any organized attempt at the encouragement 
of literary productivity. Matthew Arnold's favorite bit of 
irreverence in which he seemed to find endless enjoyment 
was in twitting the unfortunate Bishop who had said that 
" something ought to be done " for the Holy Trinity. It 
was a business-like proposition that involved a spiritual 
incongruity. 

A confusion of values is likely to take place when we 
try to " do something " for American Literature. It is 
an object that appeals to the uplifter who is anxious to " get 
results." But the difficulty is that if a piece of writing is 
literature, it does not need to be uplifted. If it is not litera- 
ture, it is likely to be so heavy that you can't lift it. We 
have been told that a man by taking thought cannot add a 
cubit to his stature. It is certainly true that we cannot add 
many cubits to our literary stature. If we could we should 
all be giants. 

When literary men discourse with one another about 
their art, they often seem to labor under a weight of re- 
sponsibility which a friendly outsider would seek to lighten. 
They are under the impression that they have left undone 
many things which they ought to have done, and that the 
Public blames them for their manifold transgressions. 

That Great American Novel ought to have been written 
long ago. There ought to be more local color and less imi- 
tation of European models. There ought to have been more 
plain speaking to demonstrate that we are not squeamish 
and are not tied to the apron strings of Mrs. Grundy. There 
ought to be a literary center and those who are at it ought 
to live up to it. 



Free Trade vs. Protection in Literature 477 

In all this it is assumed that contemporary writers can 
control the literary situation. 

Let me comfort the over-strained consciences of the mem- 
bers of the writing fraternity. Your responsibility is not 
nearly so great as you imagine. 

Literature differs from the other arts in the relation in 
which the producer stands to the consumer. Literature can 
never be made one of the protected industries. In the 
Drama the living actor has a complete monopoly. One 
might express a preference for Garrick or Booth, but if 
he goes to the theater he must take what is set before him. 
The monopoly of the singer is not quite so complete as it 
once was. But until canned music is improved, most people 
will prefer to get theirs fresh. In painting and in sculpture 
there is more or less competition with the work of other 
ages. Yet even here there is a measure of natural protec- 
tion. The old masters may be admired, but they are 
expensive. The living artist can control a certain market 
of his own. 

There is also a great opportunity for the artist and his 
friends to exert pressure. When you go to an exhibition 
of new paintings, you are not a free agent. You are aware 
that the artist or his friends may be in the vicinity to ob- 
serve how First Citizen and Second Citizen enjoy the mas- 
terpiece. Conscious of this espionage, you endeavor to look 
pleased. You observe a picture which outrages your ideas 
of the possible. You mildly remark to a bystander that 
you have never seen anything like that before. 

" Probably not," he replies, " it is not a picture 
of any outward scene, it represents the artist's state of 
mind." 

'' O," you reply, " I understand. He is making an ex- 
hibition of himself." 

It is all so personal that you do not feel like carrying the 



47^ American Essays 

investigation further. You take what is set before you and 
ask no questions. 

But with a book the relation to the producer is alto- 
gether different. You go into your library and shut the 
door, and you have the same sense of intellectual freedom 
that you have when you go into the polling booth and mark 
your Australian ballot. You are a sovereign citizen. No- 
body can know what you are reading unless you choose to 
tell. You snap your fingers at the critics. In the '' tu- 
multuous privacy " of print you enjoy what you find enjoy- 
able, and let the rest go. 

Your mind is a free port. There are no customs house 
officers to examine the cargoes that are unladen. The book 
which has just come from the press has no advantage over 
the book that is a century old. In the matter of legibility 
the old volume may be preferable, and its price is less. 
Whatever choice you make is in the face of the free com- 
petition of all the ages. Literature is the timeless art. 

Clever writers who start fashions in the literary world 
should take account of this secrecy of the reader's position. 
It is easy enough to start a fashion, the difficulty is to 
get people to follow it. Few people will follow a fashion 
except when other people are looking at them. When they 
are alone they relapse into something which they enjoy 
and which they find comfortable. 

The ultimate consumer of literature is therefore inclined 
to take a philosophical view of the contentions among lit- 
erary people, about what seem to them the violent fluctua- 
tions of taste. These fashions come and go, but the quiet 
reader is undisturbed. There are enough good books already 
printed to last his life-time. Aware of this, he is not 
alarmed by the cries of the *' calamity howlers '' who predict 
a famine. 

From a purely commercial viewpoint, this competition 



Free Trade vs. Protection in Literature 479 

with writers of all generations is disconcerting. But I do 
not see that anything can be done to prevent it. The prin- 
ciple of protection fails. Trades-unionism offers no remedy. 
What if all the living authors should join in a general strike ! 
We tremble to think of the army of strike-breakers that 
would rush in from all centuries. 

From the literary viewpoint, however, this free competi- 
tion is very stimulating and even exciting. To hold our 
own under free trade conditions, we must not put all our 
thought on increasing the output. In order to meet the 
free competition to which we are exposed, we must improve 
the quality of our work. Perhaps that may be good for us. 



DANTE AND THE BOWERY 
Theodore Roosevelt 

It is the conventional thing to praise Dante because he 
of set purpose " used the language of the market-place," 
so as to be understanded of the common people ; but we do 
not in practice either admire or understand a man who 
writes in the language of our own market-place. It must 
be the Florentine market-place of the thirteenth century — 
not Fulton Market of to-day. What infinite use Dante 
would have made of the Bowery ! Of course, he could 
have done it only because not merely he himself, the great 
poet, but his audience also, would have accepted it as natu- 
ral. The nineteenth century was more apt than the thir- 
teenth to boast of itself as being the greatest of the centuries ; 
but, save as regards purely material objects, ranging from 
locomotives to bank buildings, it did not wholly believe in its 
boasting. A nineteenth-century poet, when trying to illus- 
trate some point he was making, obviously felt uncom- 
fortable in mentioning nineteenth-century heroes if he also 
referred to those of classic times, lest he should be suspected 
of instituting comparisons between them. A thirteenth- 
century poet was not in the least troubled by any such 
misgivings, and quite simply illustrated his point by allu- 
sions to any character in history or romance, ancient or 
contemporary, that happened to occur to him. 

Of all the poets of the nineteenth century, Walt Whit- 
man was the only one who dared use the Bowery — that is, 
use anything that was striking and vividly typical of the 

480 



Dante and the Bowery 481 

humanity around him — as Dante used the ordinary humanity 
of his day; and even Whitman was not quite natural in 
doing so, for he always felt that he was defying the 
conventions and prejudices of his neighbors, and his self- 
consciousness made him a little defiant. Dante was not 
defiant of conventions : the conventions of his day did not 
forbid him to use human nature just as he saw it, no less 
than human nature as he read about it. The Bowery is one 
of the great highways of humanity, a highway of seething 
life, of varied interest, of fun, of work, of sordid and ter- 
rible tragedy; and it is haunted by demons as evil as any 
that stalk through the pages of the Inferno. But no man 
of Dante's art and with Dante's soul would write of it 
nowadays; and he would hardly be understood if he did. 
Whitman wrote of homely things and every-day men, and 
of their greatness, but his art was not equal to his power and 
his purpose ; and, even as it was, he, the poet, by set inten- 
tion, of the democracy, is not known to the people as widely 
as he should be known; and it is only the few — the men 
like Edward FitzGerald, John Burroughs, and W. E. Hen- 
ley — who prize him as he ought to be prized. 

Nowadays, at the outset of the twentieth century, culti- 
vated people would ridicule the poet who illustrated 
fundamental truths, as Dante did six hundred years ago, 
by examples drawn alike from human nature as he saw it 
around him and from human nature as he read of it. I 
suppose that this must be partly because we are so self- 
conscious as always to read a comparison into any illustra- 
tion, forgetting the fact that no comparison is implied 
between two men, in the sense of estimating their relative 
greatness or importance, when the career of each of them 
is chosen merely to illustrate some given quality that both 
possess. It is also probably due to the fact that an age 
in which the critical faculty is greatly developed often tends 



482 American Essays 

to develop a certain querulous inability to understand the 
fundamental truths which less critical ages accept as a 
matter of course. To such critics it seems improper, and 
indeed ludicrous, to illustrate human nature by examples 
chosen alike from the Brooklyn Navy Yard or Castle Gar- 
den and the Pir^us, alike from Tammany and from the 
Roman mob organized by the foes or friends of Caesar. To 
Dante such feeling itself w^ould have been inexplicable. 

Dante dealt v^ith those tremendous qualities of the human 
soul v^hich dwarf all differences in outward and visible 
form and station, and therefore he illustrated what he meant 
by any example that seemed to him apt. Only the great 
names of antiquity had been handed down, and so, when 
he spoke of pride or violence or flattery, and wished to 
illustrate his thesis by an appeal to the past, he could speak 
only of great and prominent characters ; but in the present 
of his day most of the men he knew, or knew of, were 
naturally people of no permanent importance — just as is 
the case in the present of our own day. Yet the passions 
of these men were the same as those of the heroes of old, 
godlike or demoniac ; and so he unhesitatingly used his con- 
temporaries, or his immediate predecessors, to illustrate his 
points, without regard to their prominence or lack of 
prominence. He was not concerned with the differences 
in their fortunes and careers, with their heroic proportions 
or lack of such proportions ; he was a mystic whose imagi- 
nation soared so high and whose thoughts plumbed so 
deeply the far depths of our being that he was also quite 
simply a realist ; for the eternal mysteries were ever before 
his mind, and, compared to them, the differences between 
the careers of the mighty masters of mankind and the 
careers of even very humble people seemed trivial. If we 
translate his comparisons into the terms of our day, we 
are apt to feel amused over this trait of his, until we go 



Dante and the Bowery 483 

a little deeper and understand that we are ourselves to 
blame, because we have lost the faculty simply and natu- 
rally to recognize that the essential traits of humanity are 
shown alike by big men and by little men, in the lives that 
are now being lived and in those that are long ended. 

Probably no two characters in Dante impress the ordi- 
nary reader more than Farinata and Capaneus : the man 
who raises himself waist-high from out his burning sepul- 
cher, unshaken by torment, and the rnan who, with scornful 
disdain, refuses to brush from his body the falling flames ; 
the great souls — magnanimous, Dante calls them — whom no 
torture, no disaster, no failure of the most absolute kind 
could force to yield or to bow before the dread powers 
that had mastered them. Dante has created these men, has 
made them permanent additions to the great figures of the 
world ; they are imaginary only in the sense that Achilles 
and Ulysses are imaginary — that is, they are now as real 
as the figures of any men that ever lived. One of them 
was a mythical hero in a mythical feat, the other a second- 
rate faction leader in a faction-ridden Italian city of the thir- 
teenth century, whose deeds have not the slightest im- 
portance aside from what Dante's mention gives. Yet the 
two men are mentioned as naturally as Alexander and 
Csesar are mentioned. Evidently they are dwelt upon at 
length because Dante felt it his duty to express a peculiar 
horror for that fierce pride which could defy its overlord, 
while at the same time, and perhaps unwillingly, he could 
not conceal a certain shuddering admiration for the lofty 
courage on which this evil pride was based. 

The point I wish to make is the simplicity with which 
Dante illustrated one of the principles on which he lays most 
stress, by the example of a man who was of consequence 
only in the history of the parochial politics of Florence. 
Farinata will now live forever as a symbol of the soul; 



484 American Essays 

yet as an historical figure he is dwarfed beside any one 
of hundreds of the leaders in our own Revolution and Civil 
War. Tom Benton, of Missouri, and Jefferson Davis, of 
Mississippi, were opposed to one another with a bitterness 
which surpassed that which rived asunder- Guelph from 
Ghibellin, or black Guelph from white Guelph. They played 
mighty parts in a tragedy more tremendous than any which 
any mediaeval city ever witnessed or could have witnessed. 
Each possessed an iron will and undaunted courage, physical 
and moral; each led a life of varied interest and danger, 
and exercised a power not possible in the career of the 
Florentine. One, the champion of the Union, fought for his 
principles as unyieldingly as the other fought for what he 
deemed right in trying to break up the Union. Each was 
a colossal figure. Each, when the forces against which 
he fought overcame him — for in his latter years Benton saw 
the cause of disunion triumph in Missouri, just as Jefferson 
Davis lived to see the cause of union triumph in the Nation 
— fronted an adverse fate with the frowning defiance, the 
high heart, and the stubborn will which Dante has com- 
memorated for all time in his hero who " held hell in great 
scorn." Yet a modern poet who endeavored to illustrate 
such a point by reference to Benton and Davis would be 
uncomfortably conscious that his audience would laugh at 
him. He would feel ill at ease, and therefore would convey 
the impression of being ill at ease, exactly as he would feel 
that he was posing, was forced and unnatural, if he referred 
to the deeds of the evil heroes of the Paris Commune as he 
would without hesitation refer to the many similar but 
smaller leaders of riots in the Roman forum. 

Dante speaks of a couple of French troubadours, or of 
a local SiciHan poet, just as he speaks of Euripides; and 
quite properly, for they illustrate as well what he has to 
teach ; but we of to-day could not possibly speak of a couple 



Dante and the Bowery 485 

of recent French poets or German novelists In the same 
connection without having an uncomfortable feeling that we 
ought to defend ourselves from possible misapprehension ; 
and therefore we could not speak of them naturally. When 
Dante wishes to assail those guilty of crimes of violence, 
he in one stanza speaks of the torments inflicted by divine 
justice on Attila (coupling him with Pyrrhus and Sextus 
Pompey — a sufficiently odd conjunction in itself, by the 
way), and in the next stanza mentions the names of a 
couple of local highwaymen who had made travel unsafe 
in particular neighborhoods. The two highwaymen in 
question were by no means as important as Jesse James 
and Billy the Kid; doubtless they were far less formidable 
fighting men, and their adventures were less striking and 
varied. Yet think of the way we should feel if a great 
poet should now arise who would incidentally illustrate the 
ferocity of the human heart by allusions both to the ter- 
rible Hunnish " scourge of God " and to the outlaws who 
in our own times defied justice in Missouri and New 
Mexico ! 

When Dante wishes to illustrate the fierce passions "of 
the human heart, he may speak of Lycurgus, or of Saul; 
or he may* speak of two local contemporary captains, victor 
or vanquished in obscure struggles between Guelph and 
Ghibellin ; men like Jacopo del Cassero or Buonconte, whom 
he mentions as naturally as he does Cyrus or Rehoboam. 
He is entirely right! What one among our own writers, 
however, would be able simply and naturally to mention 
Ulrich Dahlgren, or Custer, or Morgan, or Raphael Semmes, 
or Marion, or Sumter, as illustrating the qualities shown 
by Hannibal, or Rameses, or William the Conqueror, or by 
Moses or Hercules ? Yet the Guelph and Ghibellin captains 
of whom Dante speaks were in no way as important as 
these American soldiers of the second or third rank. Dante 



486 American Essays 

saw nothing incongruous in treating at length of the qualities 
of all of them ; he was not thinking of comparing the genius 
of the unimportant local leader with the genius of the great 
sovereign conquerors of the past — he was thinking only of 
the qualities of courage and daring and of the awful horror 
of death; and when we deal with what is elemental in the 
human soul it matters but little whose soul we take. In 
the same way he mentions a couple of spendthrifts of 
Padua and Siena, who come to violent ends, just as in the 
preceding canto he had dwelt upon the tortures undergone 
by Dionysius and Simon de Montfort, guarded by Nessus 
and his fellow centaurs. For some reason he hated the 
spendthrifts in question as the Whigs of Revolutionary 
South Carolina and New York hated Tarleton, Kruger, 
Saint Leger, and De Lancey ; and to him there was nothing 
incongruous in drawing a lesson from one couple of of- 
fenders more than from another. (It would, by the way, 
be outside my present purpose to speak of the rather puz- 
zling manner in which Dante confounds his own hatreds 
with those of heaven, and, for instance, shows a vindictive 
enjoyment in putting his personal opponent Filippo Argenti 
in hell, for no clearly adequate reason.) 

When he turns from those whom he is glad to see in hell 
toward those for whom he cares, he shows the same delight- 
ful power of penetrating through the externals into the 
essentials. Cato and Manfred illustrate his point no better 
than Belacqua, a contemporary Florentine maker of citherns. 
Alas ! what poet to-day would dare to illustrate his argu- 
ment by introducing Steinway in company with Cato and 
Manfred ! Yet again, when examples of love are needed, 
he draws them from the wedding-feast at Cana, from the 
actions of Pylades and Orestes, and from the life of a 
kindly, honest comb-dealer of Siena who had just died. 
Could we now link together Peter Cooper and Pylades, 



Dante and the Bowery 487 

without feeling a sense of incongruity ? He couples Priscian 
with a politician of local note who had written an encyclo- 
paedia and a lawyer of distinction who had lectured at 
Bologna and Oxford ; we could not now with such fine un- 
consciousness bring Evarts and one of the compilers of the 
Encyclopccdia Britannica into a life comparison. 

When Dante deals with the crimes which he most 
abhorred, simony and barratry, he flails offenders of his 
age who were of the same type as those who in our days 
flourish by political or commercial corruption ; and he names 
his offenders, both those just dead and those still living, 
and puts them, popes and politicians alike, in hell. There 
have been trust magnates and politicians and editors and 
magazine-writers in our own country whose lives and deeds 
were no more edifying than those of the men who lie in the 
third and the fifth chasm of the eighth circle of the Inferno ; 
yet for a poet to name those men would be condemned as 
an instance of shocking taste. 

One age expresses itself naturally in a form that would 
be unnatural, and therefore undesirable, in another age. 
We do not express ourselves nowadays in epics at all ; and 
we keep the emotions aroused in us by what is good or evil 
in the men of the present in a totally different compartment 
from that which holds our emotions concerning what was 
good or evil in the men of the past. An imitation of the 
letter of the times past, when the spirit has wholly altered, 
would be worse than useless ; and the very qualities that 
help to make Dante's poem immortal would, if copied nowa- 
days, make the copyist ridiculous. Nevertheless, it would 
be a good thing if we could, in some measure, achieve the 
mighty Florentine's high simplicity of soul, at least to the 
extent of recognizing in those around us the eternal quali- 
ties which we admire or condemn in the men who wrought 
good or evil at any stage in the world's previous history. 



488 American Essays 

Dante's masterpiece is one of the supreme works of art that 
the ages have witnessed ; but he would have been the last 
to wish that it should be treated only as a work of art, or 
worshiped only for art's sake, without reference to the 
dread lessons it teaches mankind. 



[From History as Literature and Other Essays, by Theodore Roose- 
velt. Copyright, 1913, by Charles Scribner's Sons.] 



THE REVOLT OF THE UNFIT 
Nicholas Murray Butler 

There are wars and rumors of wars in a portion of the 
territory occupied by the doctrine of organic evolution. All 
is not working smoothly and well and according to formula. 
It begins to appear that those men of science who, having 
derived the doctrine of organic evolution in its modern form 
from observations on earthworms, on -climbing-plants, and 
on brightly colored birds, and who then straightway applied 
it blithely to man and his affairs, have made enemies of no 
small part of the human race. 

It was all well enough to treat some earthworms, some 
climbing-plants, and some brightly colored birds as fit, and 
others as unfit, to survive ; but when this distinction is 
extended over human beings and their economic, social, 
and political affairs, there is a general pricking-up of ears. 
The consciously fit look down on the resulting discussions 
with complacent scorn. The consciously unfit rage and roar 
loudty; while the unconsciously unfit bestir themselves 
mightily to overturn the whole theory upon which the dis- 
tinction between fitness and unfitness rests. If any law of 
nature makes so absurd a distinction as that, then the offend- 
ing and obnoxious law must be repealed, and that quickly. 

The trouble appears to arise primarily from the fact that 
man does not like what may be termed his evolutionary poor 
relations. He is willing enough to read about earthworms 
and climbing-plants and brightly colored birds, but he does 
not want nature to be making leaps from any of these to 
him. 

489 



490 American Essays 

The earthworm, which, not being adapted to its sur- 
roundings, soon dies unhonored and unsung, passes peace- 
fully out of life without either a coroner's inquest, an indict- 
ment for earthworm slaughter, a legislative proposal for 
the future protection of earthworms, or even a new society 
for the reform of the social and economic state of the earth- 
worms that are left. Even the quasi-intelligent climbing- 
plant and the brightly colored bird, humanly vain, find an 
equally inconspicuous fate awaiting them. This is the way 
nature operates when unimpeded or unchallenged by the 
powerful manifestations of human revolt or human revenge. 
Of course if man understood the place assigned to him in 
nature by the doctrine of organic evolution as well as the 
earthworm, the climbing-plant, and the brightly colored 
bird understand theirs, he, too, like them, would submit 
to nature's processes and decrees without a protest. As a 
matter of logic, no doubt he ought to; but after all these 
centuries, it is still a far cry from logic to life. 

In fact, man, unless he is consciously and admittedly fit, 
revolts against the implication of the doctrine of evolution, 
and objects both to being considered unfit to survive and 
succeed, and to being forced to accept the only fate which 
nature offers to those whg are unfit for survival and suc- 
cess. Indeed, he manifests with amazing pertinacity what 
Schopenhauer used to call '' the will to live,'' and considera- 
tions and arguments based on adaptability to environment 
have no weight with him. So much the worse for environ- 
ment, he cries ; and straightway sets out to prove it. 

On the other hand, those humans who are classed by the 
doctrine of evolution as fit, exhibit a most disconcerting 
satisfaction vv^ith things as they are. The fit make no con- 
scious struggle for existence. They do not have to. Being 
fit, they survive ipso facto. Thus does the doctrine of evo- 
lution, like a playful kitten, merrily pursue its tail with 



The Revolt of the Unfit 491 

rapturous delight. The fit survive; those survive who are 
fit. Nothing could be more simple. 

Those who are not adapted to the conditions that sur- 
round them, however, rebel against the fate of the earth- 
worm and the cHmbing-plant and the brightly colored bird, 
and engage in a conscious struggle for existence and for 
success in that existence despite their inappropriate environ- 
ment. Statutes can be repealed or amended ; why not laws 
of nature as well? Those human beings who are unfit 
have, it must be admitted, one great, though perhaps tem- 
porary, advantage over the laws of nature; for the laws 
of nature have not yet been granted suffrage, and the or- 
ganized unfit can always lead a large majority to the polls. 
So soon as knowledge of this fact becomes common prop- 
erty, the laws of nature will have a bad quarter of an hour 
in more countries than one. 

The revolt of the unfit primarily takes the form of at- 
tempts to lessen and to limit competition, which is instinct- 
ively felt, and with reason, to be part of the struggle for 
existence and for success. The inequalities which nature 
makes, and without which the process of evolution could 
not go on, the unfit propose to smooth away and to wipe out 
by that magic fiat of collective human will called legislation. 
The great struggle between the gods of Olympus and the 
Titans, which the ancient sculptors so loved to picture, was 
child's play compared with the struggle between the laws 
of nature and the laws of man which the civilized world is 
apparently soon to be invited to witness. This struggle will 
bear a little examination, and it may be that the laws of 
nature, as the doctrine of evolution conceives and states 
them, will not have everything their own way. 

Professor Huxley, whose orthodoxy as an evolutionist 
will hardly be questioned, made a suggestion of this kind 
in his Romanes lecture as long ago as 1893. He called 



492 American Essays 

attention then to the fact that there is a fallacy in the 
notion that because, on the whole, animals and plants have 
advanced in perfection of organization by means of the 
struggle for existence and the consequent survival of the 
fittest, therefore, men as social and ethical beings must de- 
pend upon the same process to help them to perfection. As 
Professor Huxley suggests, this fallacy doubtless has its 
origin in the ambiguity of the phrase " survival of the fit- 
test." One jumps to the conclusion that fittest means best; 
whereas, of course, it has in it no moral element whatever. 
The doctrine of evolution uses the term fitness in a hard 
and stern sense. Nothing more is meant by it than a meas- 
ure of adaptation to surrounding conditions. Into this con- 
ception of fitness there enters no element of beauty, no 
element of morality, no element of progress toward an ideal. 
Fitness is a cold fact ascertainable with almost mathematical 
certainty. 

We now begin to catch sight of the real significance of 
this struggle between the laws of nature and the laws of 
man. From one point of view the struggle is hopeless from 
the start; from another it is full of promise. If it be true 
that man really proposes to halt the laws of nature by his 
legislation, then the struggle is hopeless. It is only a ques- 
tion of time when the laws of nature will have their way. 
If, on the other hand, the struggle between the laws of 
nature and the laws of man is in reality a mock struggle, 
and the supposed combat merely an exhibition of evolution- 
ary boxing, then we may find a clew to what is really 
going on. 

It might be worth while, for example, to follow up the 
suggestion that in looking back over the whole series of 
products of organic evolution, the real successes and per- 
manences of life are to be found among those species that 
have been able to institute something like what we call a 



The Revolt of the Unfit 493 

social system. Wherever an individual insists upon treating 
himself as an end in himself, and all other individuals as 
his actual or potential competitors or enemies, then the fate 
of the earthworm, the climbing-plant, and the brightly 
colored bird is sure to be his; for he has brought himself 
under the jurisdiction of one of nature's laws, and sooner 
or later he must succumb to that law of nature, and in the 
struggle for existence his place will be marked out for him 
by it with unerring precision. If, however, he has devel- 
oped so far as to have risen to the lofty height of human 
sympathy, and thereby has learned to transcend his indi- 
viduality and to make himself a member of a larger whole, 
he may then save himself from the extinction which follows 
inevitably upon proved unfitness in the individual struggle 
for existence. 

So soon as the individual has something to give, there 
will be those who have something to give to him, and he 
elevates himself above this relentless law with its inexorable 
punishments for the unfit. At that point, when individuals 
begin to give each to the other, then their mutual co- 
operation and interdependence build human society, and 
participation in that society changes the whole character of 
the human struggle. Nevertheless, large numbers of human 
beings carry with them into social and political relations 
the traditions and instincts of the old individualistic strug- 
gle for existence, with the laws of organic evolution pointing 
grimly to their several destinies. These are not able to 
realize that moral elements, and what we call progress 
toward an end or ideal, are not found under the operation 
of the law of natural selection, but have to be discovered 
elsewhere and added to it. Beauty, morality, progress have 
other lurking-places than in the struggle for existence, and 
they have for their sponsors other laws than that of natural 
selection. You will read the pages of Darwin and of Her- 



494 American Essays 

bert Spencer in vain for any indication of how the Parthenon 
was produced, how the Sistine Madonna, how the Ninth 
Symphony of Beethoven, how the Divine Comedy, or Ham- 
let or Faust. There are many mysteries left in the world, 
thank God, and these are some of them. 

The escape of genius from the cloud-covered mountain- 
tops of the unknown into human society has not yet been 
accounted for. Even Rousseau made a mistake. When 
he was writing the Contr at social it is recorded that his 
attention was favorably attracted by the island of Corsica. 
He, being engaged in the process of finding out how to 
repeal the laws of man by the laws of nature, spoke of 
Corsica as the one country in Europe that seemed to him 
capable of legislation. This led him to add : • " I have a 
presentiment that some day this little island will astonish 
Europe." It was not long before Corsica did astonish 
Europe, but not by any capacity for legislation. As some 
clever person has said, it let loose Napoleon. We know 
nothing more of the origin and advent of genius than 
that. 

Perhaps we should comprehend these things better were 
it not for the persistence of the superstition that human 
beings habitually think. There is no more persistent super- 
stition than this. Linnaeus helped it on to an undeserved 
permanence when he devised the name Homo sapiens for 
the highest species of the order primates. That was the 
quintessence of complimentary nomenclature. Of course 
human beings as such do not think. A real thinker is one 
of the rarest things in nature. He comes only at long 
intervals in human history, and when he does come, he is 
often astonishingly unwelcome. Indeed, he is sometimes 
speedily sent the way of the unfit and unprotesting earth- 
worm. Emerson understood this^ as he understood so many 
other of the deep things of life. For he wrote : '' Beware 



The Revolt of the Unfit 495 

when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. 
Then all things are at risk." 

The plain fact is that man is not ruled by thinking. When 
man thinks he thinks, he usually merely feels ; and his in- 
stincts and feelings are powerful precisely in proportion 
as they are irrational. Reason reveals the other side, and 
a knowledge of the other side is fatal to the driving power 
of a prejudice. Prejudices have their important uses, but 
it is well to try not to mix them up with principles. 

The underlying principle in the widespread and ominous 
revolt of the unfit is that moral considerations must out- 
weigh the mere blind struggle for existence in human 
affairs. 

It is to this fact that we must hold fast if we would 
understand the world of to-day, and still more the world 
of to-morrow. The purpose of the revolt of the unfit is to 
substitute interdependence on a higher plane for the struggle 
for existence on a lower one. Who dares attempt to picture 
what will happen if this revolt shall not succeed? 

These are problems full of fascination. In one form or 
another they will persist as long as humanity itself. There 
is only one way of getting rid of them, and that is so charm- 
ingly and wittily pointed out by Robert Louis Steven- 
son in his fable, " The Four Reformers," that I wish to 
quote it : 

'' Four reformers met under a bramble-bush. They were 
all agreed the world must be changed. ' We must abolish 
property,' said one. 

We must abolish marriage,' said the second. 

'' ' We must abolish God,' said the third. 

" ' I wish we could abolish work,' said the fourth. 

Do not let us get beyond practical politics,' said the 
first. ' The first thing is to reduce men to a common 
level.' 



496 American Essays 

" ' The first thing,' said the second, ' is to give freedom 
to the sexes/ 

'' ' The first thing,* said the third, ' is to find out how to 
do it/ 

" ' The first step,' said the first, ' is to abolish the Bible/ 

" ' The first thing,' said the second, ' is to abolish the 
laws/ 

" ' The first thing,' said the third, ' is to abolish man- 
kind/ " 



[From Why Should We Change Our Form of Government, by 

Nicholas Murray Butler. Copyright, 1912, by 

Charles Scribner's Sons.] 



ON TRANSLATING THE ODES OF HORACE 
W. P. Trent 

In a letter written on August 21, 1703, to Robert Harley, 
afterward Earl of Oxford and Prime Minister, by Dr. 
George Hickes, the famous scholar and non- juror, there is 
a reference to " old Dr. Biram Eaton who has read Horace 
over, as they tell me, many hundred times, oftener, I fear, 
than he has read the Gospels." Dr. Biram Eaton has es- 
caped an article in the Dictionary of National Biography, 
and, so far as I know, he has never been reckoned by 
Horatians among their patron saints. In view of the slur 
cast upon him by Dr. Hickes I should like to propose his 
canonization, but I should much prefer to lay a wager that 
he found time between his readings to try to turn some of 
the odes of his favorite writer into English verses, probably 
into couplets resembling those of Dryden. And I should 
also be willing to wager that before and after making each 
of his versions, he gave expression, in some form or other, 
to the proverbial statement that to attempt to translate 
Horace is to attempt the impossible. 

Perhaps we owe to this proverbial impossibility the fact 
that the translator of Horace is always with us. A living 
antinomy, he writes a modest preface ; then exclaiming in 
the words of his master, '' Nil mortalihus ardui est," he tries 
to scale very heaven in his folly, to rush blindly per vetitum 
nefas. But because he has loved much, therefore is much 
forgiven him. To love Horace and not attempt to translate 
him would be to flout that principle of altruism in which 

497 



49^ American Essays 

some modern thinkers have discovered, more poetically per- 
haps than philosophically, the motive force of civilization. 
" We love Horace, and hence we must try to set him forth 
in a v^ay to make others love him," is what all translators, 
it would seem, say to themselves, consciously or uncon- 
sciously, when they decide to publish their respective rendi- 
tions. And who shall blame them? Where is the critic 
competent to judge their work, who has not himself listened 
to the Siren's song, if but for a moment in his youth, who 
has not a version of some ode of Horace hid away among 
his papers, the memory of which will doubtless forever pre- 
vent him from flinging a stone at any fellow-offender ? 

It is not only impossible to translate Horace adequately, 
but it is impossible to explain satisfactorily the causes of 
his unbounded popularity — a popularity illustrated by the 
fact that when that well-known group of American book- 
lovers, the Bibliophile Society, were seeking to determine 
what great man of letters they would first honor by issuing 
one or more of his works in sumptuous form, they chose — 
not an author of their own day or nation or language — but 
a writer dead nearly two thousand years, of alien race and 
tongue, spokesman of a civilization remote and strange, the 
Horace of the immortal Odes. Yet admirers of Lucretius 
and of Catullus tell us very plainly and insistently that this 
Horace of the Odes is not a great poet. We listen respect- 
fully to the charge and somehow we do not seem greatly 
to resent it; we merely read the Odes, if possible, more 
diligently and affectionately — not, it is true, in the splendid 
Bibliophile volumes, but in some well-worn pocket edition 
that has accompanied us on our journeys, or, like one I own, 
has helped us to while away the hours on a deer stand, 
through which the deer, as shy as the fawn with which the 
poet compared Chloe, simply would not run. If we own 
such a pocket volume, we leave our critical faculties in 



On Translating the Odes of Horace 499 

abeyance when Dante, in the Inferno, introduces Horace 
to us along with Homer and Ovid and Lucan; for do not 
our hearts tell us that in the truest sense of the phrase, 
he is worthy to walk with the greatest of this mediaevally 
assorted company? We feel sure that Virgil must have 
loved him as a man; we have proof that Milton admired 
him as a poet. We deny to him '' the grand manner/' but 
we attribute to him every charm. When we seek to analyze 
this charm, we are left with the suspicion that, after we 
have pointed out many of its elements, such as humor, 
vivacity, kindliness, sententiousness, and the like, there are 
as many others, equally potent but more subtle, that escape 
us altogether. So we turn the hackneyed saying into " the 
charm is the man," and contentedly exchange analysis for 
enjoyment. And yet we are persuaded that no author is 
more worthy of the painstaking, detailed study characteristic 
of modern scholarship than is this same Epicurean poet, who 
so utterly defies analysis and would be the first, were he 
not but " dust and a shade," to smile at our ponderous erudi- 
tion. We feel that the scholar who shall devote the best 
years of his life to studying the influence of Horace upon 
subsequent writers in the chief literatures and to collecting 
the tributes that have been paid to his genius by the great 
and worthy of all lands and ages, will deserve sincere bene- 
dictions. We conclude, in shorty that that exquisite epithet, 
" the well-beloved," so inappropriately bestowed upon the 
worthless and flippant French King, belongs to Horace, and 
to Horace alone, jure divino. 

But this praise of Horace and this defense of his trans- 
lators fails to justify or explain the writing of this paper. 
An honest confession being good for the soul, I will confess 
that the remarks that follow were first employed to intro- 
duce some versions of selected Odes I was once rash enough 
to publish, It is not a good sportsman that shuts his eyes 



500 American Essays 

and bangs away with both barrels at a flock of birds, and 
I now doubt whether I was wise in trying to bring down 
readers, if not with my verse-barrel, at least with my prose- 
barrel. Being older, I use at present only one barrel at a 
time and, perhaps for the same reason, I am wont to try 
the prose-barrel. And fortunately I can apply to the com- 
ments I intend to make on Horatian translators the quota- 
tion I used in order to mollify irate readers of my own verse 
renderings. It came from a once popular, now forgotten 
poet, the Rev. John Pomfret, and it ran as follows : — " It 
will be to little purpose, the Author presumes, to offer any 
reasons why the following poems appear in public; for it is 
ten to one whether he gives the true, and if he does, it is 
much greater odds whether the gentle reader is so courte- 
ous as to believe him." 

So much has been written on the methods of Horace's 
translators, and so much remains to be written, that it is 
hard to determine where to begin ; but perhaps the preface 
of the late Professor Conington to his well-known transla- 
tion of the Odes will furnish a proper point of departure. 
Few persons, whether translators or readers, are likely to 
object to Conington's first premise that the translator ought 
to aim at '' some kind of metrical conformity to his original.'' 
To reproduce an original Sapphic or Alcaic stanza in blank 
verse, or in the couplets of Pope, is at once to repel the 
reader who knows Horace welL> and to give the reader who 
is unacquainted with Latin lyric poetry a totally erroneous 
conception of the metrical and rhythmical methods of the 
poet. To render a compressed Latin verse by a diffuse 
English one is to do injustice, as Conington observes, to the 
sententiousness for which Horace is justly celebrated, al- 
though the English scholar, had he written after the appear- 
ance of Mr. Gladstone's attempt to render the Odes, might 
with propriety have added that the translator should not, 



On Translating the Odes of Horace 501 

in his avoidance of diffuseness^ be seduced by the facility 
of the octosyllabic couplet. To translate Horace's odes into 
anything but quatrains, except on occasions, is also to ofTend 
the meticulous Horatian and to mislead any reader who 
seeks to know the poet through an English rendering. It 
would seem, however, that when Professor Conington in- 
sisted that an English measure once adopted for the Alcaic 
must be used for every ode in which Horace employed the 
stanza just named, he went far toward hampering the trans- 
lator, who, despite his proneness to ofifend, has his rights. 
That such uniformity ought to be aimed at, and that it 
will, as a rule, be aimed at, is doubtless true ; but there is 
an element of the problem with which Conington does not 
seem sufficiently to have reckoned. 

This is rhyme, which he assumed to be necessary to a 
successful rendition of an ode of Horace. A particular 
stanza not employing rhyme may probably be used without 
resulting loss in translating every ode written in a special 
form. Yet this may not be the case with a stanza employing 
rhymes, if the translator aim, as he should, at a fairly, 
though not an awkwardly literal rendering of the language 
of his original. There will necessarily be coincidences of 
sound in a literal prose version of a Latin stanza that will 
suggest a definite and advantageous arrangement of rhymes 
for a poetical version. To adopt a certain English stanza 
in which to render a certain Latin stanza wherever it oc- 
curs, is to do away with this natural advantage, which pre- 
sents itself oftener than might at first be supposed. 

Concrete examples will serve to make my meaning clear. 
The third ode of the first book, the admirable " Sic te diva 
potens Cypri," is written in what is called the Second 
Asclepiad meter; so is the delightful ninth ode of the 
third book, the " Donee gratus eram." We will assume that 
for the first of these odes the translator has chosen a 



502 American Essays 

quatrain with alternating rhymes (a, b, a, b). Following 
Professor Conington's rule of uniformity, he must employ 
the same stanza for the second of the two odes, which, by 
the way, Conington himself did not do, for reasons which 
he gave at length. Now the fifth stanza of the " Donee 
gratus eram " runs as follows : — 

" Quid si prisca redit Venus 

Diductosque jugo cogit aeneo, 
Si flava excutitur Chloe 

Rejectaeque patet janua Lydiae?" 

This may be rendered in prose : — 

" What if the former Love return and join with brazen 
yoke the parted ones, if yellow-haired Chloe be shaken off, 
and the door stand open for rejected Lydia?" 

If my memory does not deceive me, it was this stanza, 
and especially one word in its last verse, that determined 
the arrangement of rhymes in a version I attempted years 
ago, *' Consule Planco." This verse seemed to run in- 
evitably into 

"And open stand for Lydia the door." 

It needed but a moment to detect in the first verse of the 
stanza a possible rhyme-word. The syllable re of redit 
furnished more, not the most apt of rhymes with door, but 
still sufficient, as things go with amateur translators, and 
with a perhaps pardonable tautology I wrote 

" What if the former Love once more 
Return — " 

Two other rhymes were found with little difficulty in the 
di of diductos and in excutitur, which suggested wide and 
cast aside, and the whole stanza, omitting strictly metrical 



On Translating the Odes of Horace 503 

considerations, appeared, or rather might have appeared, for 
I have changed it sHghtly, as follows : — 

" What if the former Love once more 
Return and yoke the sweethearts parted wide. 
If fair-haired Chloe be cast aside, 
And open stand for Lydia the door?" 

This stanza seemed to have the merit of almost complete 
literalness, since it omitted only two epithets, and I thought 
it had no unpardonable defects of rhythm and diction. So I 
took it as a model, and with little difficulty translated the 
entire ode — with what success I should not say and others 
need not inquire. 

That rhymes and their position in the stanza are often 
determined for the translator by his original or else by a 
prose rendering of that original seems also to be shown by 
the following version of the closing ode of the first book 
(Carm. xxxviii) — the graceful *' Persicos odi": — 

" I hate your Persian Mappings, boy, 
Your linden-woven crowns annoy. 
Cease searching for the spot where blows 
The lingering rose, 

" To simple myrtle nothing add ; 
The myrtle misbecomes, my lad, 
Nor thee nor me drinking my wine 
'Neath close-grown vine." 

Here " puer," boy, and " Displicent," displease or annoy, 
seem to determine, not merely the first rhyme, but the rhyme 
arrangement (a, a), and it needs but a glance at the close of 
the first stanza of the original to show that another word 
rhyming with " boy '* would be hard to obtain. It follows 
that, if we are to have a quatrain, the third and fourth verses 
should probably be made to rhyme (b, b), and it is not diffi- 
cult to comply with this requirement, or to cast the second 
ctanza in the mold of the first. It is, alas ! too true that 



504 American Essays 

no equivalent to " blows " will be found in Horace, that 
*' Sedulus euro " has been unceremoniously thrown aside, 
that the poet does not specifically mention " wine " as the 
beverage he liked to drink in his rustic arbor. But a " rose," 
which Horace does mention, certainly " blows " or blooms 
very often in English verse ; it is not too far-fetched to get 
" nothing add " and " lad " out of " nihil allabores " and 
" ministrum " ; and " vine " (*' vite ") has suggested *' wine " 
to many generations of poets. But it is rhyme suggestions 
and their influence upon the choice of stanzaic form that 
have occasioned this mild protest against Professor Coning- 
ton's precepts of rigid stanzaic conformity. I am convinced, 
from the above examples and from many more, not only 
that uniformity of stanza is not to be strictly insisted upon 
when one is employing rhymes, but also that translators 
should search more diligently than they appear to do for 
the rhyme suggestions implicit in so many Horatian 
stanzas. 

Upon other points it is easier to agree with Conington. 
For most of the odes the iambic movement natural to Eng- 
lish is preferable, as Milton may be held to have perceived. 
He abandoned rhyme in his celebrated version of the '' Quis 
multa gracilis " (i., v.), and hence he had an excellent oppor- 
tunity to indulge in experiments in so-called logaoedic verse. 
But he clung to the iambic movement, and the fact is sig- 
nificant, although not to be pressed, since he gave us no other 
rendering of an entire ode. Here too, however, I must plead 
for a careful study of each ode by the would-be translator, 
for there seem to be cases in which it would be almost 
disastrous to attempt a version in iambics. Such a case is 
presented by the beautiful " Diffugere nives " (iv., vii.). 
The iambic renderings of Professor Conington and Sir 
Theodore Martin seem to stray far from the original move- 
ment — as far as the former's '' ' No 'scaping death ' pro- 



On Translating the Odes of Horace 505 

claims the year " does from the diction of Horace or of any 
other good poet. It is true that EngUsh dactyls are dan- 
gerous things, especially in translations, where the padding 
or packing which is natural to the measure when employed 
in English, is increased by the padding inevitably introduced 
into a translation from a synthetic into an analytic language. 
Yet the dactylic movement of the First Archilochian, in 
which the " Diffugere nives " is written, is hardly without 
great loss to be represented by any use of English iambics. 
It presents more difficulty than the introduction of some- 
thing resembling the movement of dactylic hexameters 
proper into our blank verse. 

When the translator makes up his mind to attempt a 
close approximation to the Horatian meter, it would seem 
that he should eschew the use of rhyme as likely to operate 
against that effect of likeness to the original which he is 
striving to secure. But, since the use of rhyme in lyric 
poetry appears, as Conington held, to be essential at present 
if the English version is to be acceptable as poetry, this close 
approximation can be desirable in a few special cases only. 
It will not do to dogmatize on such matters, but it may be 
safely said that no poet, not even Milton or Whitman, has 
yet accustomed the English or the American ear to the use 
of rhymeless verse in lyrical poetry. Here and there a suc- 
cessful rhymeless lyric, such as Collins's " Ode to Evening *' 
and Tennyson's " Alcaics " on Milton, shows us that rhyme- 
less stanzas may occasionally be used for lyric purposes with 
good effect; but thus far those translators of Horace who 
have made a practice of eschewing rhyme have failed, as a 
rule, like the first Lord Lytton,^ to give us versions that 

^ Just as I am revising these comments, the two volumes of 
the Earl of Lytton's admirable biography of his grandfather find 
themselves on my table. As was to be expected, they contain sev- 
eral interesting references to Horace. " He is the model for popu- 
lar lyrics, and certainly the greatest lyrist extant." Again — " Observe 



5o6 American Essays 

charm. Yet charm is what the translator of Horace should 
chiefly endeavor to convey. 

I am still more confident that Conington was right when 
he insisted that the English rendering should be confined 
" within the same number of lines as the Latin." He was 
surely right when he taxed Sir Theodore Martin, who so 
frequently violated this rule, with an exuberance that is 
totally at variance with the severity of the classics. Such 
exuberance is almost certain to result if the translator aban- 
don the strict number of the lines into which the Roman 
poet compressed his thought. It results, too, from the use 
of stanzas of over four verses each. There is no other rule 
of translating that will so effectively insure a successful 
retention of the diction of the original as this of the line 
for line rendering, whenever such rendering is possible. 
And that the diction and the thought of the poet should 
be more closely followed than is usually the case, admits of 
no manner of doubt. We have already seen that a close 
scrutiny of the Latin will often suggest an almost literal 
rendering of the thought and diction. Such a rendering is 
more desired by the reader who is familiar with Horace 
than by the reader who is not, but it will be both pleasing 
and serviceable to the latter, if the quality of literalness be 
not too slavishly obtained. Metrical considerations and gen- 
eral smoothness ought, as a matter of course, to weigh with 
every translator, but surely they ought not to outweigh accu- 
rate rendering of diction and thought, especially the diction 
and thought of a poet so felicitous as Horace in his phrasing, 
and so just and happy in his observation of life. 

In this connection I am not sure but that Conington went 

how wonderfully he compresses and studies terseness, as if afraid 
to bore an impatient, idle audience ; secondly, when he selects his 
picture, how it stands out — Cleopatra's flight, the speech of Regulus, 
the vision of Hades in the ode on his escape from the tree, &c." 



On Translating the Odes of Horace 507 

too far when he recommended the Horatian translator to 
hold by the diction of our own Augustan period. That the 
Age of Pope corresponds in many ways with that of Horace 
is true enough, and the student of the poetry of the eight- 
eenth century who cares at all for the poets he studies is 
almost sure to be an admirer of the " Roman bard " whom 
Pope imitated. But the diction of Horace does not strike 
one as stilted, while that of Pope often does; and for a 
translator of our own days to employ a diction that seems 
in any way stilted is fatal not merely to the popularity and 
hence to the present effectiveness of his work, but also, in 
all probability, to its intrinsic value. There is a good deal 
of the commonplace also in the poetry produced in the eight- 
eenth century;; but commonplace the translator of Horace 
can least afford to be. Horace himself may approach dan- 
gerously near the commonplace, yet he seems always to miss 
it by a dexterous and graceful turn. The translator, running 
after, will miss this turn sufficiently often, as it is ; he can- 
not, therefore, afford to steep himself in a literature that 
has a tendency to the commonplace. But just as little can 
he afford to steep himself in the Romantic Poets from Shel- 
ley to Swinburne. A translation, whether from the Greek 
or the Latin, imbibing the luxuriance of imagination and 
phrasing characteristic of these modern poets, may satisfy 
a reader still in his intellectual teens, but the reader who 
makes use of a translation of Horace is likely to have 
passed out of that period of immaturity. It may be heretical, 
but I fancy that the translator of Horace who steeps himself 
in Keats or Tennyson, will be even less likely to give us 
the ideal rendering than the translator who steeps himself 
in Pope. Luxuriance and elegance may at times be more 
displeasing than excessive polish and point. 

To mention the eighteenth century is to bring up the 
thought of Horatian paraphrases. A successful paraphrase 



5o8 American Essays 

is sometimes better as poetry than a good poetical transla- 
tion, and it not infrequently conveys a juster idea of the 
spirit of Horace. It is almost needless to praise the work 
in this kind of Mr. Austin Dobson and of the late Eugene 
Field. But a paraphrase, however good, can never be 
entirely satisfying either to the reader that knows Horace 
or to the reader that desires to know him. Nor can a prose 
version be thoroughly satisfactory. What is wanted is not 
merely the drift of the poet's thought, but, as near as may 
be, what he actually sang. The paraphrase may sing, and 
the prose version may give us the thought in nearly equiva- 
lent words, which may carry along with them not a little of 
the poet's feeling; but neither answers all our requirements 
as well as a good rendering in verse may do — such a ren- 
dering, for example, as that which the late Goldwin Smith 
gave of the '' Coelo tonantem " (iii,, v.) — yet there is surely 
room for all these forms of approach to a poet who is, para- 
doxically enough, at one and the same time, the most ap- 
proachable and the most unapproachable of writers. 

But one could write forever upon the topic of poetical 
translation in general, and of the translation of Horace's 
odes in particular. It is a subject about which people will 
differ to the end of time; a subject the principles of which 
will never be thoroughly exemplified in practice. Still, it 
always seems to fascinate those who discuss it, and they 
have a way of hoping that what they have said about it 
will not be without value to those who want to read about it. 
" Hope springs eternal in the human breast,"' said the poet 
who also wrote of his great master lines that have not been 
surpassed in their kind : — 

" Horace still charms with graceful negligence, 
And without method talks us into sense, 
Will like a friend familiarly convey, 
The truest notions in the easiest way." 



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